Photocatalytic reduction of Cr(VI) using newly synthesized black phosphorus/ZnO nanocomposites

ABSTRACT

Removal of high toxic Cr(VI) with solar plays an important role in improving water pollution, but is facing a dilemma of developing excellent photocatalysts with high conversion efficiency and low cost. Different from traditional nano-structuring, this work focuses on the interfacial hybridization by considering the intrinsic difference in bonding interaction. Herein, we intentionally make some layered black phosphorus (BP) sheets with Van der Waals interaction to bond with ZnO surfaces, in which some additional electron channels can be formed by this multilevel atomic hybridization to accelerate carrier transfer and separation. Compared to the pristine ZnO and BP nanosheets, the light absorption and carrier separation efficiency can be sharply enhanced by this particular electronic structure, which makes the Cr reduction performance enhanced about 7.1 times. Our findings suggest a new insight into accelerating Cr(VI) reduction by designing interfacial atom hybridization.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Interfacial atom hybridization
• multilevel electronic channels
• Cr(VI) reduction
• photocatalysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China [grant number 2021YFD1700600]; National Key Plan for the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 42007342]; National Science Funds for Creative Research Groups of China [grant number 51421006]; Zhejiang Province Postdoctoral Research Funding Project [grant number ZJ2021047].