The fast degradation for tetracycline over the Ag/AgBr/BiOBr photocatalyst under visible light

A series of Ag/AgBr/BiOBr photocatalysts with different weight contents of Ag/AgBr were successfully constructed via a simple precipitation method in 80 °C water bath. Photocatalysts were characterized by XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, N 2 Adsorption-Desorption (BET), and UV–Vis Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS). Compared with BiOBr and Ag/AgBr, all the composite photocatalysts show the prominent photocatalytic activity for the degradation of tetracycline (TC). Especially, 1:5Ag/AgBr/BiOBr (20%) has the highest reaction rate constant (kapp = 0.20 min −1 ). Moreover, according to the results of radical scavengers runs, ·OH and h + acted as the main reactive species in the degradation process. Based on above, a possible photocatalytic mechanism for organics degradation over Ag/AgBr/BiOBr was proposed. Interestingly, the redox cycle between O 2 /·O 2 − and Br − /Br 0 assisted with the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect of silver dramatically promotes the separation and transfer of electron–hole pairs, and improves the photocatalytic activity of the as-obtained composite samples.