Novel mesoporous graphitic carbon nitride modified PbBiO 2 Br porous microspheres with enhanced photocatalytic performance.

Sustainable mesoporous graphitic carbon nitride (mpg-C3 N4 ) modified PbBiO2 Br porous microsphere (mpg-C3 N4 /PbBiO2 Br) had been successfully synthesized via solvothermal process. Multiple techniques were applied to explore the structure, morphology, optical and electronic properties of the as-prepared photocatalysts. It could be found that the mpg-C3 N4 was uniformly distributed on the surface of the PbBiO2 Br porous microsphere. Compared with the pure PbBiO2 Br, the mpg-C3 N4 /PbBiO2 Br exhibited superior photocatalytic activity for the degradation of organic pollutants under visible light irradiation. When the mass fraction of mpg-C3 N4 was 3%, the mpg-C3 N4 /PbBiO2 Br composite materials exhibited the highest photocatalytic performance. The results indicated that the introduction of mpg-C3 N4 could effectively enhance the electron mobility to promote the catalytic activity. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of the mpg-C3 N4 /PbBiO2 Br materials can be attributed to the stronger optical trapping capability and the more effective separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. During the process of photocatalysis, the main active species of the photocatalysts were determined to be the and hole under visible light irradiation. Based on the relative band positions of mpg-C3 N4 and PbBiO2 Br, a possible photocatalytic mechanism of mpg-C3 N4 /PbBiO2 Br composite catalyst was proposed.