Construction of an attapulgite intercalated mesoporous g-C₃N₄ with enhanced photocatalytic activity for antibiotic degradation

A novel intercalation structure g-C₃N₄ photocatalyst is successfully fabricated by eutectic technique and calcination method, it shows a better degradation efficiency to tetracycline under the visible light. Moreover, the as-prepared photocatalysts are characterized by a series of means, such as PL, FL spectra, EIS, ESR etc. The improved photocatalytic performance could be attributed to the intercalation effect and conductivity of attapulgite (ATP), which enhanced the optical absorption and separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-holes (decay lifetime is 4.3 ns). Moreover, radical trapping experiments and ESR measurement indicated the superoxide radical and photogenerated holes are the major activity species on removing tetracycline in g-C₃N₄@ATP. The degradation mechanism and the degradation intermediate products are proposed to better understand the reaction process. Additionally, the work provides a new insight for constructing other high performance, low-cost and intercalation structure photocatalyst for wastewater treatment.