Rubidium Chloride (RbCl)-Assisted Defective g-C3N4/Bi2O2CO3 Layered Heterostructure Photocatalyst for Enhanced Charge Separation and Photodecomposing Antibiotics

Photocatalysis is a green and effective way to degrade antibiotic remnants, one of the main persistent and ecotoxic sources for aquatic environment pollution. Developing highly efficient photocatalysts is a key issue for large-scale application of this technique. In this work, we showed that layered heterostructure photocatalyst composed of defective g-C3N4 by RbCl-assisted thermal polymerization of melamine (RbCN)/Bi2O2CO3 (BOC) appeared as a promising candidate for photocatalytic degradation of antibiotic pollutants. The as-prepared RbCN/BOC heterostructure photocatalyst exhibited better photocatalytic activity than bare BOC, and can degrade 84% of tetracycline hydrochloride within 60 min under illumination. The observed improvement is ascribed to enhanced transfer and restrained recombination of free electron–hole pairs generated under light irradiation as a result of staggered band alignment of RbCN/BOC, extended optical response region, large interface area and possibly more reactive sites associated with RbCl-assisted in-plane structural modification of g-C3N4.