Photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline by copper(I) oxide loaded on Daylily Stalk derived carbon material

Abstract

In this work, Daylily Stalks derived N doped carbon material (N-DSC) with a high specific surface area was firstly prepared by a chemical activation method, and then cubic Cu2O nanoparticles were combined with the prepared N-DSC to obtain N-DSC/Cu2O composite as the catalyst for the photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline (TC) antibiotics under visible light. It is found that the obtained composite had higher photocatalytic activity than pure Cu2O. Particularly, 25 wt% N-DSC/Cu2O composite showed the highest photocatalytic performance with 95 % of TC degradation within 100 min and more excellent stability. Combined with various characterizations, it is confirmed that carbon bonds should be conducive to the separation of photoelectron and hole, and the carbon layer with an excellent electrical conductivity on Cu2O can reduce the charge transfer resistance between N-DSC and Cu2O, thereby improving the absorption of visible light and enhancing the photocatalytic activity. Moreover, it is considered that the synergistic effect of photo-generated electron pair in Cu2O and N-DSC could promote the photodegradation efficiency of N-DSC/Cu2O composite. In addition, the active species capture experiment confirmed that •OH and •O2− should be the main active species for TC degradation under visible light. This study is expected to provide a novel low-cost photocatalysts for pollutants removal.

Keywords

• Visible-light photocatalysts
• N-DSC/Cu2O composite
• Photodegradation
• Tetracycline antibiotics