METAL-ORGANIC FRAMEWORK BASED PHOTOCATALYSTS FOR WATER TREATMENT

Abstract

Visible-light promoted photocatalysis for degradation of organic pollutants is a promising direction in the field of water treatment. Because of their many outstanding properties, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are ideal candidate materials for development of high performance catalysts in water medium. In this study, UiO-66, a zirconium based MOF, was utilized as a versatile and stable substrate to incorporate with diverse functional materials, such as Bi2WO6, AgI, Ag2CO3 and BiOBr, for preparation of visible-light photocatalysts. The resulting MOF based composites not only exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity for dye degradation under visible-light irradiation, but also demonstrated good catalyst stability which can be attributed to the outstanding stability of MOF and good interaction between the functional materials and MOF. Additionally, photocatalytic mechanism of dye degradation was also studied. Last but not least, this study should be practically beneficial to development of various MOF-supported visible-light photocatalysts in the future.