Precise control of photogenerated carrier behavior of zinc oxide through band reconstruction to enhance photocatalytic treatment of dye wastewater.

ABSTRACT

In the field of photocatalytic treatment of dye wastewater, zinc oxide (ZnO) is a typical semiconductor photocatalyst, but it has some disadvantages such as wide band gap, low carrier yield and easy recombination. In this study, Cr-ZnO/N-CQDs catalyst was synthesised using the strategy of p-type doping and construction of Z-scheme heterojunction. The results showed that the removal rate of Cr-ZnO/N-CQDs for MB dye was 97.42 %, which was 70.56 % higher than that of ZnO, and was still 92.16 % after 5 cycles, and the TOC removal rate of methylene blue wastewater was 88.60 %. The reason for the enhanced photocatalytic activity of Cr-ZnO/N-CQDs is that the π* electron (e-) in the N-CQDs interact with the 3d orbitals of Cr-ZnO, so that e- is more easily transferred from the valence band of Cr-ZnO to the conduction band of N-CQDs. The band gap of p-type Cr-ZnO is narrowed, which makes its photogenerated carrier yield increase, hole concentration raise, and the adsorption capacity of H2O molecules reduce by 1.04 eV. The density functional theory calculation shows that the maximum Gibbs free energy of Cr-ZnO for the production of hydroxyl radical is 0.05 eV lower than that of ZnO. This study lays theoretical and practical foundation for the photocatalytic treatment of dye wastewater with ZnO.