Interfacial engineering boosting the piezocatalytic performance of Z-scheme heterojunction for carbamazepine degradation: Mechanism, degradation pathway and DFT calculation

In this work, a Z-scheme Bi2S3-Bi2WO6 (BS-BWO) heterojunction with interfacial Bi-S bonds was constructed by in-situ growing Bi(2)S(3 )nanorods on Bi(2)WO(6 )nanosheets. The obtained BS-BWO heterojunction exhibited significantly enhanced piezocatalytic performance on carbamazepine (CBZ) degradation with an apparent rate constant of 0.087 min(-1). Density functional theory (DFT) calculations together with experimental characterizations illustrated that the boosted piezocatalytic performance of BS-BWO could be ascribed to the Z-scheme charge transfer through the formed Bi-S bonds, which increased the charge transfer/separation efficiency and maintained the strong redox ability of photogenerated electrons/holes. Moreover, the increased piezoelectric potential of BS-BWO, as supported by COMSOL simulation, also contributed to the enhanced piezocatalytic performance. This study sheds light on the design and development of promising piezocatalysts for environ-mental remediation.

Automated summary

In this work, a Z-scheme Bi2S3-Bi2WO6 heterojunction with interfacial Bi-S bonds was constructed. The obtained BS-BWO heterojunction exhibited significantly enhanced piezocatalytic performance, which could be attributed to the Z-scheme charge transfer through the formed Bi-S bonds. The increased piezoelectric potential of BS-BWO also contributed to the enhanced piezocatalytic performance, as supported by COMSOL simulation.