Novel Fe-Mn-O nanosheets/wood carbon hybrid with tunable surface properties as a superior catalyst for Fenton-like oxidation

Cost-effective, highly efficient and conveniently recycled heterogeneous catalyst is urgently desirable for wastewater treatment. Wood-derived monolith offers new opportunity because of its toilless functionalization and flexible processing. Herein, ferrum manganese oxide nanosheets (Fe-Mn-O NSs) were successfully grown on the microchannels of carbonized wood to construct a novel 3D wood-derived block for efficient wastewater treatment. The wood carbon not only acts as a 3D substrate to support Fe-Mn-O NSs, but also contributes to unimpeded mass diffusion benefiting from the numerous open channels and hierarchical pores on channel walls. More importantly, except for the exposure of sufficient active sites, several important surface properties (i.e. surface defects, surface charge, low-valence metal concentration and charge transfer) were improved by doping alien-metal element, resulting in greatly improved Fenton activity and stability. Notably, due to flexible processing of wood carbon, this block catalyst can be extended to filter membrane for removing pollutants in flow wastewater.