The superior photocatalytic performance and DFT insights of S-scheme CuO@TiO2 heterojunction composites for simultaneous degradation of organics

Hesham Hamad; Mohamed M Elsenety; Wagih Sadik; Abdel-Ghaffar El-Demerdash; Adel Nashed; Amr Mostafa; Shaimaa Elyamny

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-05981-7

The superior photocatalytic performance and DFT insights of S-scheme CuO@TiO₂ heterojunction composites for simultaneous degradation of organics

Sci Rep. 2022 Feb 9;12(1):2217. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-05981-7.

Authors

Hesham Hamad¹, Mohamed M Elsenety², Wagih Sadik³, Abdel-Ghaffar El-Demerdash³, Adel Nashed³, Amr Mostafa³, Shaimaa Elyamny⁴

Affiliations

¹ Fabrication Technology Research Department, Advanced Technology and New Materials Research Institute (ATNMRI), City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications (SRTA-City), New Borg El-Arab City, Alexandria, 21934, Egypt. hhamad@srtacity.sci.eg.
² Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, P.O. 11823, Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt.
³ Materials Science Department, Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt.
⁴ Electronic Materials Research Department, Advanced Technology and New Materials Research Institute, City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications (SRTA-City), P.O. Box 21934, New Borg El-Arab City, Alexandria, Egypt.

Abstract

The necessity to resolve the issue of rapid charge carrier recombination for boosting photocatalytic performance is a vigorous and challenging research field. To address this, the construction of a binary system of step-scheme (S-scheme) CuO@TiO₂ heterostructure composite has been demonstrated through a facile solid-state route. The remarkably enhanced photocatalytic performance of CuO@TiO₂, compared with single TiO₂, which can consequence in the more efficient separation of photoinduced charge carriers, reduced the band gap of TiO₂, improved the electrical transport performance, and improved the lifetimes, thus donating it with the much more powerful oxidation and reduction capability. A photocatalytic mechanism was proposed to explain the boosted photocatalytic performance of CuO@TiO₂ on a complete analysis of physicochemical, DFT calculations, and electrochemical properties. In addition, this work focused on the investigation of the stability and recyclability of CuO@TiO₂ in terms of efficiency and its physical origin using XRD, BET, and XPS. It is found that the removal efficiency diminishes 4.5% upon five recycling runs. The current study not only promoted our knowledge of the binary system of S-scheme CuO@TiO₂ heterojunction composite photocatalyst but also shed new light on the design of heterostructure photocatalysts with high-performance and high stability.