Electrostatic self-assembled layered polymers form supramolecular heterojunction catalyst for photocatalytic reduction of high-stability nitrate in water

Shuo Wang; Ying Zhao; Mingyi Zhang; Jing Feng; Tong Wei; Yueming Ren; Jun Ma

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.04.172

Electrostatic self-assembled layered polymers form supramolecular heterojunction catalyst for photocatalytic reduction of high-stability nitrate in water

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Sep 15:622:828-839. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.04.172. Epub 2022 May 4.

Authors

Shuo Wang¹, Ying Zhao², Mingyi Zhang³, Jing Feng¹, Tong Wei¹, Yueming Ren⁴, Jun Ma⁵

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Superlight Materials and Surface Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.
³ Key Laboratory for Photonic and Electronic Band Gap Materials, Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150025, China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Superlight Materials and Surface Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China. Electronic address: renyueming@hrbeu.edu.cn.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China. Electronic address: majun@hit.edu.cn.

PMID: 35561603
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.04.172

Abstract

In this work, two polymers are connected by electrostatic self-assembly method to form a supramolecular heterojunction to remove pollutants. g-C₃N₄-Cl/PANI catalyst can be used for photocatalytic reduction of nitrate in water, and the nitrogen selectivity reaches 98.2%. Specially, charge density analysis and comparative experiments showed that the introduction of covalent chlorine increased in electron transfer conduction between layers. In addition, differential charge density and solid EPR tests reveal high electron density and electron transfer pathways for supramolecular heterostructures. The results of the work function give direct evidence for the high catalytic performance of the supramolecular heterojunction. The reasons and active species of photocatalytic reduction of nitrate by g-C₃N₄-Cl and g-C₃N₄-Cl/PANI are compared. The catalyst exhibits the performance of highly reducing nitrate to harmless nitrogen with the contribution of supramolecular heterojunction and covalent chlorine. In short, a new idea of constructing a supramolecular photocatalyst is proposed, which can be applied to efficiency reduce nitrate in water.

Keywords: Electrostatic self-assembled; Nitrate reduction; Photocatalytic; Supramolecular heterojunction.