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Updated: Sep 7, 2025
A Complete Method for Evaluating the Performance of Photocatalysts for the Degradation of Antibiotics in Environmental Remediation
Published on: October 6, 2022
Visible-light driven dual heterojunction formed between g-C3N4/BiOCl@MXene-Ti3C2 for the effective degradation of
Gaurav Sharma1, Amit Kumar2, Shweta Sharma3
1College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Polymer Science and Technology, Guangdong Research Center for Interfacial Engineering of Functional Materials, Nanshan District Key Lab. for Biopolymers and Safety Evaluation, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, PR China; International Research Centre of Nanotechnology for Himalayan Sustainability (IRCNHS), Shoolini University, Solan 173212, Himachal Pradesh, India; Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IPNA-CSIC) Avda. Astrofísico Fco. Sánchez 3, 38206, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
Abstract:
In the present study, we have successfully formulated a dual heterojunction of g-C3N4/BiOCl@MXene-Ti3C2 (GCBM) which was found to be highly active in the visible region. GCBM was found to be highly efficient for the degradation of an antibiotic, tetracycline (TC) as compared to the individual constituting units; g-C3N4 and BiOCl. Maximum of 97% TC degradation rate was obtained within 90 min of visible light irradiation for initial concentration of 10 mg/L of TC. Optical analysis exhibited that the synthesized heterojunction showed high absorption in the complete spectrum. The reactive species specified by the scavenger study showed the major involvement of •O2- and •OH radicals. The charge transfer mechanism showed that 2 schemes were majorly involvement in which Z-scheme was formed between g-C3N4 and BiOCl and Schottky junction was formed between g-C3N4 and Mxene-Ti3C2. The formation of Schottky junction helped in inhibiting the back transfer of photogenerated charges and thus, helped in reducing the recombination rate. The synthesized photocatalyst was found to be highly reusable and was studied for consecutive 5 cycles that generalized the high proficiency even after repetitive cycles.
