Synthesis of a GaOOH/ZnBiTaO5 heterojunction photocatalyst with enhanced photocatalytic performance toward enrofloxacin

Panqi Huang; Jingfei Luan

doi:10.1039/c9ra09741d

Synthesis of a GaOOH/ZnBiTaO₅ heterojunction photocatalyst with enhanced photocatalytic performance toward enrofloxacin

RSC Adv. 2020 Jan 27;10(8):4286-4292. doi: 10.1039/c9ra09741d. eCollection 2020 Jan 24.

Authors

Panqi Huang¹, Jingfei Luan^{2

1}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University Nanjing 210023 China jfluan@nju.edu.cn.
² School of Physics, Changchun Normal University Changchun Jilin 130032 China.

Abstract

In this work, a GaOOH/ZnBiTaO₅ heterojunction photocatalyst was synthesized innovatively and characterization techniques including XRD, SEM-EDS, XPS, FT-IR, PL and UV-Vis DRS were carried out to analyse the structural and morphological properties of the GaOOH/ZnBiTaO₅ heterojunction photocatalyst. The GaOOH is dispersed on the surface of ZnBiTaO₅ to form a heterojunction structure according to the SEM image. The band gaps of 10 wt%, 25 wt% and 50 wt% GaOOH/ZnBiTaO₅ heterojunction photocatalysts were calculated to be 3.21 eV, 3.22 eV and 3.23 eV, respectively, which were between the band gaps of pure ZnBiTaO₅ (3.19 eV) and pure GaOOH (4.76 eV). The photocatalytic performance of the GaOOH/ZnBiTaO₅ heterojunction photocatalyst was investigated by degrading enrofloxacin under ultraviolet light. The results showed that the as-prepared 25 wt% GaOOH/ZnBiTaO₅ presented optimal photocatalytic performance and could remove 58.27% of enrofloxacin in 60 min, which was higher than that of pure ZnBiTaO₅ (53.7%) and pure GaOOH (35.4%). In addition, it was confirmed that ˙O₂ ^-, h⁺ and ˙OH were all the active radicals during the degradation process. Finally, the possible degradation mechanism of enrofloxacin was discussed in detail. This work provided a viable strategy for improving the photocatalytic performance of wide band gap semiconductors.