Hydroxyl-rich carbon nitride microspheres with carbon doping for visible-light driven photocatalytic degradation of endocrine disrupting chemicals

Removal of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in water remains a big challenge and it is important to have an additional option to increase the degradation ability of the current water treatment system. In recent years, carbon nitride has demonstrated a potential application for photocatalytic degradation of EDCs in water. However, its performance is limited by restricted visible-light harvesting capacity and ready recombination of photogenerated charge carriers. In this work, hydroxyl-rich carbon nitride microspheres with carbon doping have been successfully synthesized through a simple one-step solvothermal method. The photocatalysts are characterized by XR, FT-IR, solid-state NMR, BET, SEM, UV-Vis DRS, XPS, Mott-Schottky plot, etc. Characterization results reveal that the as-prepared photocatalysts exhibit narrowed bandgap and faster separation of photogenerated charge carriers, allowing effective visible-light harvesting and improved performance in the photocatalytic degradation of EDCs. In addition, the band structures of the photocatalysts and degradation mechanisms of the EDCs are studied and postulated, elucidating that superoxide radicals are the main active species involved in the degradation process of the EDCs.