In-situ Fabrication of Lanthanides Decorated Porous Graphitic Carbon Nitride Nanosheets for Visible light Assisted Photocatalytic Breakdown of Refractory Pollutant

Abstract

Antibiotics are a significant developing contaminant due to improper disposal in sewage and industrial effluent and their indiscriminate usage. These contaminants cannot be effectively treated in wastewater treatment facilities using the currently available methods. One of the most significant technologies, photocatalysis, is valuable in many environmental applications, including wastewater remediation. The advantages of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) nanosheets over bulk g-C₃N₄ include more active sites with increased specific surface area, faster mobility, and separation of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Upconversion (UC) particles doped with lanthanides have recently been used in research to see if it is possible to boost the utilization of NIR light for photocatalysis. Lanthanides are an excellent choice for producing effective photon UC due to the rich energy level pattern that results from their split 4f electronic structures by electronic repulsion and spin-orbit coupling. The current work details the quick synthesis of porous g-C₃N₄ nanosheets doped with three different concentrations of each of the four lanthanides, including La, Eu, Tb, and Sm. Levofloxacin, a fluoroquinolone antibiotic, was photocatalytically degraded using these nanomaterials. The materials had nearly identical photocatalytic activity, with the best degradation efficiency being 100% levofloxacin elimination in 120 min.