Abstract
Tetracyclines (TCs) antibiotics are very common and often used in both human and veterinary medicines. More than 75% of TCs are excreted in an active condition and released into the environment, posing a risk to the ecosystem and human health. Residual antibiotics are in global water bodies, causing antibiotic resistance and genotoxicity in humans and aquatic organisms. The ever-increasing number of multi-resistant bacteria caused by the widespread use of antibiotics in the environment has sparked a renewed interest in developing more sustainable antibiotic degradation processes. In this regard, photodegradation technique provides a promising solution to resolve this growing issue, paving the way for complete antibiotic degradation with the generation of non-toxic by-products. As a fascinating activity towards visible light range shown by semiconductor, graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has a medium bandgap, non-toxicity, chemically stable complex, and thermally great strength. Recent studies have concentrated on the performance of g-C3N4 as a photocatalyst for treating wastewater. Pure g-C3N4 exhibits limited photocatalytic activity due to insufficient sunlight usage, small surface area, and a high rate of recombination of electron and hole (\({e}^{-}\) & \({h}^{+}\)) pairs created in photocatalytic activity. Doping of g-C3N4 is a very effective method for improving the activity as element doped g-C3N4 shows excellent bandgap and electronic structure. Doping significantly broadens the light-responsive range and reduces recombination of e− & h+ pairs. Under above context, this review provides a systematic and comprehensive outlook of designing doped g-C3N4 as well as efficiency for TCs degradation in aquatic environment.
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The work greatly acknowledges the Department of Chemical Engineering of National Institute of Technology Raipur for providing the opportunities for research.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and final preparation. Literature survey and draft of manuscript were performed by Dhruti Sundar Pattanayak, Jyoti Mishra, and Dr. Dharm Pal. The draft correction and critical revision were performed by Dr. Chandrakant Thakur and Dr. Kailas L. Wasewar. The authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Pattanayak, D.S., Pal, D., Mishra, J. et al. Doped graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) catalysts for efficient photodegradation of tetracycline antibiotics in aquatic environments. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 24919–24926 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19766-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19766-y