Abstract
The abuse of pesticides and antibiotics and their harm to the environment are the disadvantages of modern agriculture and breeding industry. g-C3N4 has shown great potential in photocatalytic water pollution purification under visible light irradiation, however, the conventional g-C3N4 suffers from the disadvantage of limited optical absorption and serious charge recombination, resulting in inefficient light energy conversion and pollutant degradation. This study provides a strategy of combining defect engineering with a built-in electric field to prepare homojunction a photocatalyst with high optical absorption rate and charge separation efficiency. Experiments and DFT simulation revealed the mechanism of significant improvement in the photocatalytic performance of the prepared catalyst, and proposed the pollutant degradation pathway. In addition, the photocatalytic effects of the prepared catalysts on different natural water bodies, natural light, and various water conditions were investigated, revealing the applicability of the catalysts in the purification of pollutants in various water environments.
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•Defect engineering was applied to the design of homojunction photocatalysts.•The efficient charge transfer over the homojunction interface is determined by experiments and DFT calculation.•The photocatalytic mechanism and degradation pathway of atrazine and tetracycline were proposed.•Photocatalytic performances under nature sunlight and in actual water samples were evaluated.