Gum Acacia-Crosslinked-Poly(Acrylamide) Hydrogel Supported C3N4/BiOI Heterostructure for Remediation of Noxious Crystal Violet Dye

Gaurav Sharma; Amit Kumar; Mu Naushad; Pooja Dhiman; Bharti Thakur; Alberto García-Peñas; Florian J Stadler

doi:10.3390/ma15072549

Gum Acacia-Crosslinked-Poly(Acrylamide) Hydrogel Supported C₃N₄/BiOI Heterostructure for Remediation of Noxious Crystal Violet Dye

Materials (Basel). 2022 Mar 30;15(7):2549. doi: 10.3390/ma15072549.

Authors

Gaurav Sharma^{1

2

3

4}, Amit Kumar^{1

2}, Mu Naushad⁵, Pooja Dhiman², Bharti Thakur², Alberto García-Peñas⁶, Florian J Stadler¹

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Polymer Science and Technology, Guangdong Research Center for Interfacial Engineering of Functional Materials, Nanshan District Key Laboratory for Biopolymers and Safety Evaluation, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
² International Research Centre of Nanotechnology for Himalayan Sustainability (IRCNHS), Shoolini University, Solan 173212, Himachal Pradesh, India.
³ School of Science and Technology, Glocal University, Saharanpur 247001, Uttar Pradesh, India.
⁴ Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IPNA-CSIC), Avda. Astrofísico Fco. Sánchez 3, 38206 La Laguna, Spain.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Departamento de Ciencia e Ingeniería de Materiales e Ingeniería Química (IAAB), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés, Spain.

Abstract

Herein, we report the designing of a C₃N₄/BiOI heterostructure that is supported on gum acacia-crosslinked-poly(acrylamide) hydrogel to fabricate a novel nanocomposite hydrogel. The potential application of the obtained nanocomposite hydrogel to remediate crystal violet dye (CVD) in an aqueous solution was explored. The structural and functional analysis of the nanocomposite hydrogel was performed by FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The different reaction parameters, such as CVD concentration, nanocomposite hydrogel dosage, and working pH, were optimized. The C₃N₄/BiOI heterostructure of the nanocomposite hydrogel depicts Z-scheme as the potential photocatalytic mechanism for the photodegradation of CVD. The degradation of CVD was also specified in terms of COD and HR-MS analysis was carried to demonstrate the major degradation pathways.

Keywords: C3N4/BiOI heterostructure; Z-scheme; adsorption; crystal violet; nanocomposite hydrogels; photocatalysis.