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La-Doped ZnO/g-C3N4 Heterojunction for Efficient Degradation of Organic Contamination Under Visible Light Irradiation

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Abstract

Considering the accelerated charge/mass transfer and the formation of active defects at the heterointerface, La-ZnO/g-C3N4 heterogeneous photocatalysts were facilely prepared via a two-step route consisting of hydrothermal and calcination processes in this work. The combination of La3+ doping in ZnO and the contact between La-ZnO and g-C3N4 endowed the heterogeneous composite with a much enhanced photocatalytic activity towards methyl blue (MB) dye decolorization under the visible light irradiation. It was found that La-ZnO/g-C3N4-4.6 showed an optimal degradation rate of MB (8.72 × 10− 2 min− 1), which is 14 times higher than that of pure g-C3N4 (6.23 × 10− 3 min− 1) under the same experimental conditions. The improved photocatalytic MB decolorization is attributed to the increased interfacial electron-hole separation efficiency through constructing La-ZnO/g-C3N4 heterogeneous interfaces. The present study manifests the advantage of heterogeneous interfaces as the charge carrier separation pathway towards boosting photocatalytic activity.

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Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the Research Start-up Fund of Anhui University (Y040433002). The authors would like to thank Dr. Haiwei Du for figure design, data analysis and manuscript proof reading.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, People’s Republic of China

    Gengsheng Xu & Fangfang You

  2. Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Chemistry for Inorganic/Organic Hybrid Functionalized Materials, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, People’s Republic of China

    Gengsheng Xu

  3. Center for Advanced Measurement Science, National Institute of Metrology, Beijing, 100029, People’s Republic of China

    Xu Li

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  1. Gengsheng Xu
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Correspondence to Gengsheng Xu.

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Xu, G., You, F. & Li, X. La-Doped ZnO/g-C3N4 Heterojunction for Efficient Degradation of Organic Contamination Under Visible Light Irradiation. J Inorg Organomet Polym 31, 375–383 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10904-020-01779-0

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