Construction of Z-type heterojunction Bi4Ti3O12/g-C3N4 with pyroelectric effect for enhanced photocatalytic performance

Abstract

Photocatalytic technology has been widely studied, discussed, and tested as a feasible wastewater degradation technology. The present study demonstrated the preparation of g-C₃N₄ material using solid-state sintering method and the construction of Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂/g-C₃N₄ heterostructure via hydrothermal method. This direct contact Z-type heterojunction improves the wide bandgap of Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂ monomer, enhances its photoresponsiveness, and thus improves its photocatalytic performance. During the process of photocatalytic experiments, an environment of cold and hot fluctuations were created, and the pyroelectric effect was utilized to induce self-polarization of the material and formed an internal electric field. It improves the transport ability of electron–hole pairs and suppresses their recombination in the transport path. According to the degradation experiment results, the degradation efficiency of pyroelectric synergistic heterojunction photocatalysis reached 88.7%, which was 2.27 times that of Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂. It proves that the photocatalysis by pyroelectric synergistic heterojunction has good application prospects.