Abstract:
Tetracycline hydrochloride (TC-HCl), which can be released into the aquatic environment through excreta, poses a potential threat to aquatic systems and human health due to its stable structure and difficult biodegradability. As one of the photocatalytic materials of great interest, BiOCl development applications are limited by the low solar light utilization and the hight rate of photogenerated electron-hole recombination. In this study, Fe-doped BiOCl porous microspheres self-assembled from two-dimensional nanosbeets were synthesized by a one-pot solvothermal method without the addition of surfactants, and the degradation properties for TC-HCl was investigated. The results showed that Fe doping narrowed the forbidden band width of BiOCl, thereby improving the light absorption intensity and broadening the photoresponse range to the visible region. Fe doping accelerated the separation of photogenerated carriers and improved the photocatalytic performance of BiOCl. The 0.15-Fe/BiOCl had the best removal effect on TC-HCl (30 mg/L), and the removal rate could reach 92% after dark adsorption and photocatalysis. Combined with the experimental results, the mechanism of photocatalytic degradation of TC-HCl by Fe-doped BiOCl under visible light is revealed in this study, and the reasons for the reduction of cycling activity are analyzed, which provides a promising method for the preparation of transition metal-doped BiOCl materials with high photocatalytic activity and feasible insights for improving the cycling activity of materials.