A novel Au/g-C3N4 nanosheets/CeO2 hollow nanospheres plasmonic heterojunction photocatalysts for the photocatalytic reduction of hexavalent chromium and oxidation of oxytetracycline hydrochloride

Abstract

Au/g-C3N4/CeO2 plasmonic heterojunction has been successfully fabricated, which was constructed by forming the three-dimensional hollow CeO2 mesoporous nanospheres on the two-dimensional Au/g-C3N4 nanosheets. The photocatalysts not only exhibited excellent catalytic reduction activity against Cr6+, but also oxidized oxytetracycline hydrochloride (OTH), and OTH catalytic degradation route was suggested by the degradation products determined by GC–MS. The improvement of photocatalytic performance comes from the high absorption capability of visible light and effective interface charge separation. Finally, it speculated that the Au/g-C3N4/CeO2 heterostructures followed Z-scheme charge transfer mechanism in this study, which is verified by the analysis of experiment and theoretical calculation results.