Construction of full solar-light driven NaYF4:Yb,Tm,Er@NaYF4:Eu/NH2-MIL-101(Fe) composite photocatalyst toward degradation of antibiotics: introducing the energy trapping centers

Photocatalysis is a promising pathway to degrade the pollution in the water with the distinct advantages. However, to remove the antibiotics in the aqueous solution is still a perplexing issue due to the stability. Development of full solar-driven heterogeneous photocatalyst is a feasible strategy to decompose the an-tibiotics into the nontoxic small molecules. A novel heterogeneous photocatalyst, NaYF4:Yb,Tm,Er@ NaYF4:20% Eu/NH2-MIL-101(Fe) (TmEr@YEu(20%)/NMF) is synthesized, in which the energy trapping center is introduced in the shell to reduce the energy loss and improve the upconversion efficiency. Under the simulated solar light, the degradation extent of TmEr@YEu(20%)/NMF toward amoxicillin (AMX) is 90%, which is 40% larger than that of NMF. It is attributed to the wide light absorption range and heterogeneous structure of TmEr@YEu(20%)/NMF. As compared with the TmEr/NMF, the photocatalytic activity of TmEr@ Y/NMF is increased by 14 %. And it is further enhanced by 16% for TmEr@YEu(20%)/NMF indicating that the core-shell structure and involvement of energy trapping center play the same important role. The me-chanism is proposed according to upconversion emission spectra, active species trapping experiments and pump power dependence of upconversion emission intensities. Involvement of shell and energy trapping center is a robust approach to achieve the enhanced upconversion efficiency and achieve the expected photocatalytic activity. This work suggests a new strategy to synthesize the upconversion nanoparticles with the improved upconversion efficiency.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Photocatalysis is a promising method for degrading water pollution, but removing antibiotics from aqueous solutions remains challenging. A novel heterogeneous photocatalyst with energy trapping center in the shell is synthesized to improve upconversion efficiency. The results show that the photocatalyst achieves a high degradation extent of amoxicillin, surpassing conventional catalysts by 40%.