Sustainable visible-light-driven Z-scheme porous Zn3(VO4)2/g-C3N4 heterostructure toward highly photoredox pollutant and mechanism insight

A simple impregnation-calcination method has been proposed to produce excellent photocatalytic Z-scheme Zn-3(VO4)(2) porous nanoflowerig-C3N4 nanosheet (ZV-CN) heterostructure photocatalyst. The optical, morphological and photocatalytical properties were investigated in details. Interestingly, after coupling Zn-3(VO4)(2) with g-C3N4, the hybrids exhibited the extended spectral response and obviously enhanced photocatalytic MB dye mineralization activity. Particularly, the high stable and reusable 5-ZV-CN photocatalyst possessed excellent photocatalytic performance (95.45%) for MB degradation as compared to g-C3N4 (57.66%) and Zn-3(VO4)(2) (36.71%), which could be attributed to the drastically improved separation efficiency of photoinduced carries, the stronger oxidation and reduction ability via direct Z-scheme transfer as well as the porous surfaces. This present work provides a new kind of g-C3N4 based Z-scheme heterojunctions with high photocatalytic activity. (C) 2017 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.