Fabrication of 3D pebble-like CeVO4/g-C3N4 nanocomposite: A visible light-driven photocatalyst for mitigation of organic pollutants

Abstract In the present work, a novel three-dimensional (3D) pebble-like CeVO4/g-C3N4 nanocomposite was prepared by a simple hydrothermal method. The crystal structure and microstructure of as-prepared samples were confirmed by the X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDAX), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), UV–Visible spectroscopy, Ultraviolet Visible Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (UV-DRS), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy techniques. Compared to pure g-C3N4 catalyst the nanocomposite CeVO4/g-C3N4 shows superior photocatalytic activity in the visible region towards the degradation of ciprofloxacin (CIP) with 92% efficiency based on the low recombination of electron-holes pairs. The rate of the CIP degradation reactions belongs to first-order kinetics. The CeVO4/g-C3N4 nanocomposite showed an excellent photocatalytic activity even after 5 consecutive cycles. The plausible degradation mechanism of the CIP was proposed by trapping experiment and the intermediated degradation products were analyzed by High-performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) method. The above set of results strongly evidenced that the CeVO4/g-C3N4 nanocomposite might be a good photocatalytic material for environmental application.