Construction of CuS/TiO2 nano-tube arrays photoelectrode and its enhanced visible light photoelectrocatalytic decomposition and mechanism of penicillin G

In this present work, a CuS/TiO2 nano-tube arrays photoelectrode employed in environment purification was successfully prepared by an anodization process, with galvanostatic electrodeposition strategy as following method. Meanwhile, morphologies and chemical structures of the resulting photoelectrodes were studied by series of measurements. The results indicated that CuS nanoparticles were successfully assembled on the surface of well-ordered TiO2 nano-tube arrays, which has significantly enhanced the photoelectrocatalyic activity by red-shifting the light absorption to visible region and increasing the photoinduced charge separation efficiency. What's more, when external potential was applied, CuS/TiO2 nano-tube arrays photoelectrode displayed superior photoelectrocatalyic performance for elimination of penicillin G (99.1%) within 150 min visible light illumination. Moreover, the visible light photoelectrocatalyic degradation pathways of PEN G were proposed based on the HPLC-MS/MS measurements, which included decarboxylation and oxidation of the target organic, and finally mineralization to H2O, CO2, NH4+ and NO3-. This study demonstrated that the novel CuS/TiO2 NTAs photoelectrode showed excellent PEC activity, which had great potential in applications of environmental remediation. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.