Mesoporous semi-ionic F-doped g-C <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si4.svg" display="inline" id="d1e443"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> N <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si5.svg" display="inline" id="d1e451"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> as efficient photocatalyst for tetracycline removal under visible light
Bao Lee Phoon, Thomas C.‐K. Yang, Bey Fen Leo, Chin Wei Lai, Sook‐Wai Phang, Joon Ching Juan
Abstract
The removal of refractory contaminants such as tetracycline (TC) antibiotics from wastewater has drawn a lot of interest. Semi-ionic mesoporous F-doped g-C3N4(e.g. GCN-F0.50) photocatalysts were successfully fabricated with different doping amounts. The GCN-F0.50 shows the highest TC removal performance under visible light irradiation (λ > 420 nm), which is 99.8% (0.0207 min−1) of removal in 180 min. The highest COD removal of TC was 75.9% using GCN-F0.50 photocatalyst. This is because the semi-ionic nature of the C-F bond has high polarity, which is capable of promoting good charge separation and migration. It was found that GCN-F0.50 provides a high mesoporous surface area (79.66 m2/g) to allow more TC pollutants to be photodegraded on the surface. In addition, the optical absorption is enhanced due to bandgap narrowing (2.55 eV). This work provides a highly efficient and good reusability photocatalyst for TC removal based on F-doped g-C3N4.