Sustainable synthesis of semicrystalline Zr-BDC MOF and heterostructural Ag3PO4/Zr-BDC/g-C3N4 composite for photocatalytic dye degradation

Zr-based MOFs have stimulated the interest of scientific community due to their exceptional variety in composition, structure and chemical environment as well consequent applications including photocatalysis. This work presents successful preparation nanosized highly-porous Zr-BDC under sustainable conditions: at room temperature, water sole solvent, with no modulators. approach solves some environmentally unfriendly drawbacks feasible requirements conventional UiO-66(Zr), whereas both materials contain practically equal linker conformation clusters linker-cluster coordination. Furthermore, ternary composites Zr-MOF combined g-C3N4 Ag3PO4 are described for first time. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopies (SEM TEM) evidenced ample efficient interaction between components within composites. Such were tested photocatalysts discoloration methylene blue (MB), reaching degradation high 95% 93% 240 105 min indoor/visible outdoor/solar irradiations, respectively, far exceeding photoactivity given by individual any two possible binary These results suggest existence relevant synergistic effects heterostructures, which favors interfacial charge transfer improves separation photoinduced electron-hole pairs. The hole (h+) has more quenching effect than hydroxyl (.OH) supper oxide (.O2-) radicals. In addition, as-obtained composite exhibited remarkable stability recyclability, least cycles considered present work. We also proposed a plausible reaction mechanism photocatalytic process.