Defect-Induced Synergetic Effect of Bi-Based Compounds for One-Pot Conversion of Organic Pollutants into CO via Coupling Photodegradation of Carbamazepine with Photoreduction of CO 2

The waste of carbon sources and greenhouse gas production during wastewater treatment have become extremely important environmental issues. Herein, the BiOBr/BiVO 4 compounds with defect-induced frustrated Lewis acid–base pairs (DFLPs) and internal charge transfer were fabricated to convert the organic pollutants into CO with nearly 100% selectivity. The oxygen vacancy (O v ) induced the built-in electric field in BiOBr/BiVO 4 to create directional charge transfer from BiOBr to BiVO 4 . Density functional theory (DFT) calculations prove that the O v combines its adjacent hydroxyls to form the DFLP active sites that can additionally capture and activate CO 2 . Meanwhile, the active sites in BiOBr/BiVO 4 reduce the formation-free energy of the COOH* intermediates, which is the key rate-limiting step to convert CO 2 to CO with high selectivity. This system has achieved selective conversion of value-added chemicals from organic pollutant degradation and provides a theoretical basis for actual wastewater recycling of carbon sources.