Interfacial engineering boosting the piezocatalytic performance of Z-scheme heterojunction for carbamazepine degradation: Mechanism, degradation pathway and DFT calculation

In this work, a Z-scheme Bi₂S₃-Bi₂WO₆ (BS-BWO) heterojunction with interfacial Bi-S bonds was constructed by in-situ growing Bi₂S₃ nanorods on Bi₂WO₆ nanosheets. The obtained BS-BWO heterojunction exhibited significantly enhanced piezocatalytic performance on carbamazepine (CBZ) degradation with an apparent rate constant of 0.087 min⁻¹. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations together with experimental characterizations illustrated that the boosted piezocatalytic performance of BS-BWO could be ascribed to the Z-scheme charge transfer through the formed Bi-S bonds, which increased the charge transfer/separation efficiency and maintained the strong redox ability of photogenerated electrons/holes. Moreover, the increased piezoelectric potential of BS-BWO, as supported by COMSOL simulation, also contributed to the enhanced piezocatalytic performance. This study sheds light on the design and development of promising piezocatalysts for environmental remediation. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.