Tuning Interfacial Charge Transfer and Exploring Morphological Insight in Biocarbon/MoSe2 Heterostructures for Enhanced Photodegradation of Organic Pollutants

Abstract

Surface and interface engineering has been proven to be an essential strategy for designing more advanced photocatalysts with enhanced photocatalytic activity. Activated biocarbon derived from sugarcane bagasse (SB-C) is used as a supporting substrate with Molybdenum diselenide (MoSe₂) to design the heterostructure photocatalyst to improve charge separation and interface charge transfer. Compared to individual MoSe₂, synthesized from different techniques, and SB-C components, the SB-C/MoSe₂ heterojunctions demonstrated a significantly enhanced ability to degrade different organic pollutants (including different organic dyes, organic solvent, and heavy metal) under visible light irradiation, achieving the best rate of 97.17% under 20 min of visible light irradiation for degrading methylene blue dye (MB), and organic solvent viz. Phenol SB-C/MoSe₂ takes 120 mins to degrade 94.25%. This remarkable capability is driven by efficient interfacial charge transfer, a larger electrochemical surface area of 5402.85 cm², a lower bandgap energy of 2.38 eV, and a reduced recombination rate of electron-hole pairs. SB-C/MoSe₂ has shown an excellent stability of 99.35% up to four cycles. These results suggested the potential for developing a highly effective heterostructure photocatalyst suitable for treating industrial wastewater by harnessing visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity.