One‐Step Fabrication of 2D/2D Z‐Scheme BiOCl/g‐C 3 N 4 Nanosheets Heterojunction for Efficient Degradation of RhB and Cr(VI) Ions Reduction under Visible‐Light Illumination

Comprehensive Insights into the Family of Atomically Thin 2D-Materials for Diverse Photocatalytic Applications

2D materials with their fascinating physiochemical, structural, and electronic properties have attracted researchers and have been used for a variety of applications such as electrocatalysis, photocatalysis, energy storage, magnetoresistance, and sensing. In recent times, 2D materials have gained great momentum in the spectrum of photocatalytic applications such as pollutant degradation, water splitting, CO2 reduction, NH3 production, microbial disinfection, and heavy metal reduction, thanks to their superior properties including visible light responsive band gap, improved charge separation and electron mobility, suppressed charge recombination and high surface reactive sites, and thus enhance the photocatalytic properties rationally as compared to 3D and other low-dimensional materials. In this context, this review spot-lights the family of various 2D materials, their properties and their 2D structure-induced photocatalytic mechanisms while giving an overview on their synthesis methods along with a detailed discussion on their diverse photocatalytic applications. Furthermore, the challenges and the future opportunities are also presented related to the future developments and advancements of 2D materials for the large-scale real-time photocatalytic applications.

Degradation of ciprofloxacin by a constitutive g-C3N4/BiOCl heterojunction under a persulfate system

Ciprofloxacin (CIP) is a third-generation quinolone antimicrobial with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, and is not fully metabolized in the human body, resulting in more than 70% of CIP being excreted into water as a prodrug. In this study, g-C₃N₄/BiOCl heterojunction structure composites were prepared to study the degradation effect of ciprofloxacin (CIP) under photocatalytic conditions. The results showed that CIP at 10 mg L^-1 was best degraded after 90 min at 0.3 g L^-1 g-C₃N₄/BiOCl-2, pH of 5.8 and PS dosing of 1 mM. The quenching experiments and electron spin resonance spectroscopy (ESR) confirmed that ˙OH, ˙SO₄ ^- and h⁺ played a major role. After the photocatalytic degradation of this reaction system, the biological toxicity of CIP was effectively controlled. This material is stable and the CIP removal rate remained above 80% after four cycles of experiments.