Doping and heterojunction construction dual-regulation: magnetically recoverable CoFe1.9Y0.1O4/g-C3N4 nanosheets with enhanced visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity

Abstract The development of efficient recoverable photocatalysts for organic pollution photodegradation has been one of the hot subjects in the past decades as a result of environmental concerns. Herein, a magnetically separable photocatalyst was successfully prepared by coupling Y-doped CoFe2O4 and graphitic carbon nitride through a simple calcination process. The obtained CoFe1.9Y0.1O4/g-C3N4 composite photocatalyst exhibited a saturation magnetization of 9.96 emu·g−1 at 300 K, indicating superior magnetic characteristic. Remarkably, the optimal photocatalytic activity of the CoFe1.9Y0.1O4/g-C3N4 for methylene orange (MO) degradation under visible light irradiation was increased up to about 3.4, 2.3 and 2.0 times larger than that of pure CoFe2O4, g-C3N4 and CoFe1.9Y0.1O4, respectively. Further studies indicated the improved performance could be attributed to the Y doping as well as the type II heterojunction formed between CoFe1.9Y0.1O4 and g-C3N4.