Photocatalytic and antimicrobial activity of decahedron-like MIL-125(Ti) anchored on AgI towards efficient degradation of tetracycline:activity evaluation, mechanism and pathway

In this work, AgI nanoparticles were anchored on decahedron-like MIL-125(Ti) through wet precipitation method, and the photocatalytic activities were analyzed by tetracycline (TC) degradation rates under simulated sunlight. The structures, morphologies, valence bonds, optical absorption properties, charge separation effi-ciencies of the prepared samples were tested by XRD, SEM, EDS, XPS, UV-Vis DRS and PL spectroscopy. Compared with pure MIL-125(Ti), AgI@MIL-125(Ti) displayed excellent photocatalytic performance on TC degradation. When the mass fraction of AgI in AgI@MIL-125(Ti) was 10 %, AgI@MIL-125(Ti)-10 % displayed the best photocatalytic efficiency, which 96.9 % of TC was removed under simulated sunlight for 30 min. The results of active species trapping experiments and ESR tests showed that the Z-Scheme heterojunction between AgI and MIL-125(Ti) promoted the separation of photogenerated charges. Furthermore, a part of Ag+ were reduced to Ag NPs in the process of photocatalytic reaction, which constructed a cross-linking bridge for the charges at the interface of AgI and MIL-125(Ti) and further accelerated the electron transmission. The intermediate toxicity experiments proved that the toxic structures are destroyed in TC solution after MIL-125(Ti)-10 % photocatalytic degradation, and the toxicity of the reaction system was reduced effectively.