Solar-light driven multifunctions of sulfur vacancy modified α-MnS/Ni3S2-x on nickel foam

Self-cycled photo-Fenton system, which integrates photocatalysis with Fenton technology, is investigated thoroughly in wastewater treatment due to the virtues of no addition of H 2 O 2 and accelerated circulation of Fe 2 + /Fe 3+ . Here we report an enhanced sulfur vacancy modified α-MnS/Ni 3 S 2 on nickel foam(NF), the simple hydrothermal successfully fabricated the magnetic floriform α-MnS/Ni 3 S 2-x /NF rich in sulfur defects. α-MnS enhanced the sulfur vacancy and further improved the hydrogen peroxide production performance of floriform Ni 3 S 2 . Without the external addition of both H 2 O 2 and Fenton-like metal ions, α-MnS/Ni 3 S 2-x /NF floriform exhibited an extremely high H 2 O 2 production rate of 51.6 mM·h −1 ·g −1 under visible light irradiation, which is the highest than those reported photocatalysis self-Fenton system in the literature. Interestingly, the self-cycled photo-Fenton strategy can be applied to the reduction of Cr(VI) and oxidative degradation of oxytetracycline hydrochloride(OTC), and the corresponding degradation and reduction rates all reach up to 98 %. The wide-spectrum light harvesting, photothermal effect and solar-driven photocatalysis in the α-MnS/Ni 3 S 2-x /NF are beneficial for the synergistically enhanced thermal-assisted photodegradation toward wastewater with a water evaporation rate of 2.01 kg·m −2 ·h −1 . Furthermore, a series of experiments and calculations were carried out to verify the photocatalytic mechanism. Density function theory (DFT) calculation shows that the formation of sulfur defects increases the number of active sites, decreases the energy barrier, and improves the activity and selectivity. In addition, α-MnS/Ni 3 S 2-x /NF floriform also exhibited good performance in real wastewater containing fluoronitrobenzene from a factory. Our findings may help the development of novel functional nanostructures for applications in environmental remediation and solar steam generation.