Ni-Ti Layered Double Hydroxide@Graphitic Carbon Nitride Nanosheet: A Novel Nanocomposite with High and Ultrafast Sonophotocatalytic Performance for Degradation of Antibiotics

Pollution of water resources by antibiotics is a growing environmental concern. In this work, nanocomposites of g-C3N4@Ni-Ti layered double hydroxides (g-C3N4@Ni-Ti LDH NCs) with high surface areas were synthesized through an optimized hydrothermal method, in the presence of NH4F. Application of various characterization techniques unraveled that the prepared nanocomposites are composed of porous Ni-Ti LDH nanoparticles and hierarchical g-C3N4 nanosheets. Further, these NCs were employed for photo catalytic and sonophotocatalytic removal of amoxicillin (AMX), as a model antibiotic, from aqueous solutions. In addition, sonocatalysis was performed. It was found out that the g-C3N4@Ni-Ti LDH NCs outperform their pure g-C3N4 and Ni-Ti LDH components in photocatalytic degradation of AMX under visible light irradiation. Also, the following order was determined for efficiency of the three adopted processes: sonocatalysis < photocatalysis < sonophotocatalysis. Furthermore, variation of the sonophotocatalysis conditions specified 500 W light intensity, 9 s on/1 s off ultrasound pulse modem and 1.25 g/L g-C3N4-20@Ni-Ti LDH as the optimal conditions. In this way, optimization of the highly efficient sonophotocatalytic process resulted in 99.5% AMX degradation within 75 min. Moreover, a TOC analyzer was employed to estimate the rate of AMX degradation over the nanocomposites. In addition, formation of hydroxyl radicals ((OH)-O-center dot) on the surface of the g-C3N4-20@Ni-Ti LDH particles was approved using the terephthalic acid probe in photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. No significant loss was observed in the sonophotocatalytic activity of the nanocomposites even after five consecutive runs. Also, a plausible mechanism was proposed for the sonophotocatalysis reaction. In general, our findings can be considered as a starting point for synthesis of other g-C3N4-based NCs and application of the resultant nanocomposites to environmental remediation.