Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of CuFeO2/SCN-A Nanocomposites for Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production and Degradation of TC
摘要
A CuFeO2/SCN-A heterojunction photocatalyst formed by coupling sulfur-doped g-C3N4 (SCN-A) and CuFeO2 was designed by hydrothermal and calcination methods. The structure and morphology, optical and photoelectrochemical characteristics, photocatalytic performance and carrier kinetics of as-synthesized samples were thoroughly analyzed. As confirmed by our findings, CuFeO2 loading significantly improves visible light absorption characteristics of SCN-A. The ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) and Mott-schottky (M-S) analyses reveal that migration pathway for the photogenerated carrier in the photocatalyst follows the carrier transport mechanism of Type-II heterojunction, facilitating effective separation of photogenerated carriers. The CuFeO2/SCN-A heterojunction demonstrates outstanding performance in photocatalytic H2 production and TC degradation. Among them, 17%CuFeO2/SCN-A shows the most remarkable performance, with its hydrogen production and TC degradation efficiencies being 35.96 times and 6.05 times that of SCN-A, separately. The current work illustrates the noble-metal-free CuFeO2/SCN-A as the effective and environmentally-adaptive photocatalyst.