Fabrication of stable high-performance urchin-like CeO2/ZnO@Au hierarchical heterojunction photocatalyst for water remediation

Linsen Huang; Deyu Bao; Xiaoqing Jiang; Junhua Li; Liangxing Zhang; Xiaosong Sun

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2020.11.099

Fabrication of stable high-performance urchin-like CeO₂/ZnO@Au hierarchical heterojunction photocatalyst for water remediation

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2021 Apr 15:588:713-724. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.11.099. Epub 2020 Dec 1.

Authors

Linsen Huang¹, Deyu Bao¹, Xiaoqing Jiang¹, Junhua Li¹, Liangxing Zhang¹, Xiaosong Sun²

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, No. 29, Wang Jiang Road, Chengdu 610064, PR China.
² College of Materials Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, No. 29, Wang Jiang Road, Chengdu 610064, PR China. Electronic address: sunxs@scu.edu.cn.

PMID: 33309241
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.11.099

Abstract

In this paper, the urchin-like CeO₂/ZnO@Au photocatalyst was rationally designed and prepared through hydrothermal method, chemical precipitation and photo reduction deposition. The optimal photocatalyst (CZA8) degraded Rhodamine B (RhB), 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) and Naproxen (NPX) about 100% within 20 min, 91.4% within 60 min and 88.9% within 30 min under Xe lamp illumination, respectively. Besides, the CZA8 possesses outstanding photo corrosion resistance capacity which has been verified with the cycle degradation experiments. The photocatalyst displays excellent light response and efficient separation of photo-induced carriers due to the fabrication of type-II heterojunction, the presence of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect and as well as the oxygen vacancy. The oxygen vacancy was systematically characterized by XPS, PL and Raman. Moreover, the photocatalytic degradation pathways are proposed based on the LC-MS results. Finally, a novel photocatalytic mechanism for photocatalytic oxidation of RhB, 4-NP and NPX is discussed and schematically illuminated.

Keywords: Au NPs; Photocatalysis; SPR effect; Type-II heterojunction.