Boosting Visible-Light Photodegradation over Ternary Strategy-Engineered Metal–Organic Frameworks

Defect engineering on metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has attracted great interest in photocatalysis by improving charge-separation efficiency. However, it inevitably brings the disadvantage of lowered light absorption ability. Herein, we successfully overcome the problem by introducing the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect and heterostructure by depositing Ag/AgCl onto defect-engineered UiO-66-NH2 to form UiO-66-NH2/Ag/AgCl. Our findings indicate that structural linker defects on UiO-66-NH2 benefit to form metallic Ag and strengthen the Ag/AgCl interaction, which consequently will pronounce the Ag SPR effect and reduce the height of the Schottky barrier of Ag/AgCl. The former can significantly promote the visible-light absorption ability, while the latter, combined with defect engineering and formation of the AgCl/UiO-66-NH2 heterostructure, greatly improves the charge-separation efficiency. Accordingly, this ternary strategy significantly boosts the visible-light photocatalytic activities of the composites for both RhB and p-chlorophenol degradation. We hope that this work will bring novel insights to design other MOF-based photocatalytic systems.