BiOI@CeO2@Ti3C2 MXene composite S-scheme photocatalyst with excellent bacteriostatic properties.

As an influential antifouling material, photocatalytic materials have drawn attention increasingly over recent years owing to their potential bacteriostatic property in the domain of marine antifouling. Herein, a flower-like BiOI@CeO2@Ti3C2 S-scheme photocatalyst was contrived and prepared by hydrothermal method. The innovative combination of Ti3C2 and narrow band gap semiconductor BiOI was implemented to modify CeO2 and the photocatalytic bacteriostatic mechanism of BiOI@CeO2@Ti3C2 was elucidated. Schottky junction was formed between CeO2 and Ti3C2, and a p-n junction was formed between CeO2 and BiOI. By photoelectrochemical characterization, BCT-10 exhibits the best photoelectrochemical performance of which photogenerated carrier transport can be performed more readily at 10 % CeO2@Ti3C2 addition. 99.76 % and 99.89 % of photocatalytic bacteriostatic efficiency of BCT-10 against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus were implemented respectively, which were 2.98 and 3.07 times higher than that of pure CeO2. The ternary heterojunction can suppress photogenerated electron-hole complexes more effectively and enhance the photocatalytic bacteriostatic effect of CeO2, which also provided a new concept to the further broadened application of CeO2 in the marine bacteriostatic and antifouling field.