Sustainable visible-light-driven Z-scheme porous Zn3(VO4)2/g-C3N4 heterostructure toward highly photoredox pollutant and mechanism insight

Abstract A simple impregnation–calcination method has been proposed to produce excellent photocatalytic Z-scheme Zn 3 (VO 4 ) 2 porous nanoflower/g-C 3 N 4 nanosheet (ZV-CN) heterostructure photocatalyst. The optical, morphological and photocatalytical properties were investigated in details. Interestingly, after coupling Zn 3 (VO 4 ) 2 with g-C 3 N 4 , the hybrids exhibited the extended spectral response and obviously enhanced photocatalytic MB dye mineralization activity. Particularly, the high stable and reusable 5-ZV-CN photocatalyst possessed excellent photocatalytic performance (95.45%) for MB degradation as compared to g-C 3 N 4 (57.66%) and Zn 3 (VO 4 ) 2 (36.71%), which could be attributed to the drastically improved separation efficiency of photoinduced carries, the stronger oxidation and reduction ability via direct Z-scheme transfer as well as the porous surfaces. This present work provides a new kind of g-C 3 N 4 based Z-scheme heterojunctions with high photocatalytic activity.