New advanced oxidation progress with chemiluminescence behavior based on NaClO triggered by WS2 nanosheets

As one integral part of coping strategies for addressing water pollution, advanced oxidation progresses (AOPs) get enormous attentions in recent years. However, the complex synthesis and high cost of H2O2 and K2S2O8 hampered their developments. Herein, a novel AOP with the chemiluminescence (CL) property based on economic NaClO and WS2 nanosheets was proposed to achieve efficient decomposition of organic pollutants. In this AOP, WS2 nanosheets exhibited a dual-function feature of the catalyst and energy acceptor. It demonstrated that the reaction order of WS2 nanosheets was equal to 0.8271 and enormous singlet oxygen (1O2),·ClO and hydroxyl radical (·OH) were generated in rhodamine B (RhB) degradation process. Interestingly, a strong CL emission was observed and reflected the relative concentration of 1O2 and·OH for adjusting the oxidizing capability in WS2 nanosheets-NaClO system. Through a series of degradation tests, RhB, methylene blue (MB), p-nitrophenol and phenol were decomposed and the degradation efficiency of over 90% was achieved. Therefore, this study not only builds a chemiluminescent AOPs to eliminate organic pollutants, but also broadens the applications of WS2 nanomaterials and CL in environmental field.