RESEARCH ARTICLE

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

  • Yingchao He 1 ,
  • Qiong Sun , 1 ,
  • Likun Sun 1 ,
  • Zhixing Gan 2 ,
  • Liyan Yu , 1 ,
  • Lifeng Dong , 1,3
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  • 1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266042, China
  • 2. Center for Future Optoelectronic Functional Materials, School of Computer and Electronic Information, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
  • 3. Department of Physics, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN 55104, USA
sunqiong@qust.edu.cn
liyanyu@qust.edu.cn
donglifeng@qust.edu.cn

Received date: 28 Apr 2023

Accepted date: 22 Jun 2023

Published date: 15 Dec 2023

Copyright

2023 Higher Education Press

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.

Cite this article

Yingchao He , Qiong Sun , Likun Sun , Zhixing Gan , Liyan Yu , Lifeng Dong . Design and mechanism insight on SiC quantum dots sensitized inverse opal TiO2 with superior photocatalytic activities under sunlight[J]. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 2023 , 17(12) : 1913 -1924 . DOI: 10.1007/s11705-023-2350-8

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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