Generation of reactive oxygen species through dissolved oxygen activation on defected porous carbon for efficient degradation of antibiotics

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are the most important practical oxidant for the degradation of various refractory organic pollutants in wastewater treatment. However, it is still challenging to develop self-producing ROS sys-tems without external auxiliary reagents and energies. Herein, a kind of defected porous carbon is constructed to sustainably release ROS for the effective degradation of antibiotics. The as-prepared porous carbon materials possess an outstanding performance yielding 98.0 % removal of common antibiotics at the concentrations of 20 mg/L in 60 min. The results show that superoxide free radical (center dot O-2(-)) plays the key role in the antibiotic degra-dation and singlet oxygen (O-1(2)) generation. Density functional theory calculations further reveal that the non-agonal ring structures of carbon-vacancies are likely dominating active centers to chemically adsorb and directly convert dissolved oxygen to center dot O-2(-). This work not only provides a novel carbon material for efficient degradation of antibiotics but also improves the understanding of the oxygen molecule activation on carbon defects.