Synthesis of MIL-125(Ti) derived TiO2 for selective photoelectrochemical sensing and photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline

Because of the tenacious vitality of tetracycline, it would also cause toxic effects on surface water at low concentrations. Therefore, it was critical to design the material as a platform with specific selective sensing functions and promote removal. A MIL-125(Ti)-derived cake-like TiO2 with recognition sites (MT450) were successfully compounded by a simple mixed-solvent thermal method and using calcination method. MT450 not only inherited the large specific surface area of MIL-125(Ti), but also had excellent photoelectrochemical properties and introduced numerous recognition sites to give it the ability to quickly and specifically recognize and bind antibiotics, and improved the selectivity and sensitivity of photoelectrochemical detection effect. The results showed that MT450/ITO modified electrode was explored as novel photoelectrochemical sensor, which presented remarkable performance for tetracycline detection in a wide linear range from 0.005 to 50 μM and the LOD was estimated as 2.83 nM. Because the imprinted cavity made the affinity between tetracycline and MT450 greater, and was profit to the opening of the electron/hole transfer channel. The proposed strategy showed that the Ti-MOFs derived material with imprinted cavities can be evaluated the selective detection of photoelectrochemistry. Furthermore, the selective effects of the molecularly imprinted materials were evaluated by photocatalytic degradation of pollutants experiment.