Design and mechanism insight on SiC quantum dots sensitized inverse opal TiO₂ with superior photocatalytic activities under sunlight

Abstract

The combination of SiC quantum dots sensitized inverse opal TiO₂ photocatalyst is designed in this work and then applied in wastewater purification under simulated sunlight. From various spectroscopic techniques, it is found that electrons transfer directionally from SiC quantum dots to inverse opal TiO₂, and the energy difference between their conduction/valence bands can reduce the recombination rate of photogenerated carriers and provide a pathway with low interfacial resistance for charge transfer inside the composite. As a result, a typical type-II mechanism is proved to dominate the photoinduced charge transfer process. Meanwhile, the composite achieves excellent photocatalytic performances (the highest apparent kinetic constant of 0.037 min^–1), which is 6.2 times (0.006 min^–1) and 2.1 times (0.018 min^–1) of the bare inverse opal TiO₂ and commercial P25 photocatalysts. Therefore, the stability and non-toxicity of SiC quantum dots sensitized inverse opal TiO₂ composite enables it with great potential in practical photocatalytic applications.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

inverse opal TiO₂ / silicon carbide quantum dots / quantum dot sensitized photocatalyst / type-II charge transfer route

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51402161, 51373086, 21606140, and 21776147), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant No. ZR2021YQ32), and the Taishan Scholar Project of Shandong Province (tsqn201909117). Dong L F also thanks financial support from the Malmstrom Endowed Fund at Hamline University.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-023-2350-8 and is accessible for authorized users.

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