Defect-enhanced activation of carbon nitride/horseradish peroxidase nanohybrids for visible-light-driven photobiocatalytic water purification

Enzymatic biodegradation offers a powerful tool to remediate the contaminated environments under mild conditions. Unfortunately, its large-scale implementation is restricted by the limited stability of extracellular enzymes. Semi-biological catalysis provides an attractive approach to address the current challenges. In this paper, we report the construction of defect-mediated enzyme-photo nanoarchitectures by coupling ultrathin carbon nitride nanosheets with horseradish peroxidase. We observed the significantly enhanced generation of reactive species over nitrogen-deficient carbon nitride. This abiotic/biotic hybrids not only provided on-demand stimuli for activating horseradish peroxidase into oxidation state, but also exhibited great potential for restraining the undesirable denaturation of extracellular enzymes. The synergistic effect between defect engineered polymers and biological molecules contributed to the 13.2-fold increased oxidation degradation (0.0327 min(-1)) of methyl orange (MO) in wastewater compared to pristine carbon nitride (0.0024 min(-1)). This work opens a new avenue of modulating the enzymatic functionality through defect engineering for high efficiency photobiocatalytic applications.

Automated summary

The construction of defect-mediated enzyme-photo nanoarchitectures improved the generation of reactive species, activated horseradish peroxidase, and restrained the denaturation of extracellular enzymes. The synergy between defect engineered polymers and biological molecules significantly increased the oxidation degradation rate of methyl orange in wastewater. This work opens up new possibilities for modulating enzymatic functionality through defect engineering for efficient photobiocatalytic applications.