A Novel Z‐Scheme Ag₃PO₄/SrTiO₃ Heterojunction for Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Degradation

Abstract

ABSTRACT There are still challenges to eliminate and reduce the harmful persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the water, especially the dye‐based POPs. Two big obstacles the Ag 3 PO 4 photocatalyst faces are serious carrier recombination and photocorrosion, which presents a limitation for its application in water purification. Therefore, in this work, a novel Ag 3 PO 4 /SrTiO 3 heterojunction was synthesized by a simple in situ deposition method. Ag 3 PO 4 /SrTiO 3 10:1 exhibits the highest photocatalytic activity with rhodamine B (RhB) degradation of 98.8% in only 20 min and methyl orange (MO) degradation of 97.5% in 80 min under simulated sunlight irradiation, which is much higher than that of pure Ag 3 PO 4 and the mixed photocatalysts. During the photocatalytic reaction, h + and •O 2 − are the main active species, and the charge transfer path is satisfied with the Z‐scheme mechanism. Additionally, the possible degradation pathways of RhB and MO were proposed by analyzing the intermediate products via HPLC‐MS.