Photoelectrochemical water splitting coupled with degradation of organic pollutants enhanced by surface and interface engineering of BiVO4 photoanode

Abstract Antibiotic resistance has become a global problem as indicated by the worldwide emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria, which makes it an urgent demand to develop effective technologies for antibiotics removal from pharmaceutical wastewater. In this work, simultaneously removing antibiotic tetracycline from wastewater coupled with pure H2 generation has been successfully achieved through PEC technique by using F-doped BiVO4@NiFe-LDH (F-BiVO4@NiFe-LDH) core-shell photoanode. The maximum photocurrent density of the F-BiVO4@NiFe-LDH photoanode at 1.23 V vs. RHE is about 6-fold that of the pristine BiVO4 photoelectrode. Furthermore, the composite photoanode was effectively applied to the PEC degradation of tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH), superior to the reported results. An experimental-computational combination study reveals that the synergistic effect between F doping and NiFe-LDH simultaneously improves the light absorption, charge separation and charge injection efficiency of BiVO4. This work presents a sunlight-driven, efficient and sustainable method for water splitting to produce hydrogen and new insights into wastewater treatment.