Design and Construction of Heterojunction-type TiO2-CdS Photocatalyst on Bacterial Cellulose with Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity

Abstract Photocatalytic degradation, a green and promising technology, has been extensively explored to reduce environmental pollutions. Herein, a Z-scheme TiO2-CdS photocatalyst with binary hierarchical structural was designed and constructed on bacterial cellulose (BC) via microwave-assisted solvothermal in-situ synthesis.The as-prepared BC@TiO2-CdS nanocomposite gel possesses enhanced photocatalytic activity with 94.47% removal of methylene blue (MB) after 180 min visible light irradiation. The enhancement of photocatalytic activity is attributed to the hierarchical structure of the TiO2-CdS nanospheres on BC, which was characterized and confirmed by SEM, EDS, XRD, XPS and Raman spectral. Meanwhile, the photoluminescence (PL) analysis reveals that the BC@TiO2-CdS nanocomposite gel follows the direct redox Z-scheme photocatalytic reaction system, which is advantageous for photogenerated charge separation and migration from TiO2 conduction band (CB) to CdS valence band (VB). Therefore, this work provides a facile route to design and construct a direct Z-scheme system for photocatalytic degradation.