Rational Design of Environmentally Friendly Carbon Nanotube Embedded Artificial Vesicle-Structured Photocatalysts for Organic Pollutants Degradation

Photocatalytic degradation is one of the most promising methods for addressing environmental issues without introducing pollution sources. Nonetheless, the majority of works are devoted to explore high-efficiency semiconductor photocatalysts, but the potential environmental risks in their application are usually neglected. In this work, an environmentally friendly vesicle-structured photocatalyst is rationally designed by employing magnetic layered double oxide-hollow spheres@antimony tin oxide as a core, phospholipid as membrane, and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as channels, yielding a multi-structural material with robust organic pollutants photocatalytic degradation and mineralization ability. Materials characterization, computational modeling, and cytotoxicity tests suggest that under visible light irradiation, photogenerated charges can be rapidly generated and transfer in the core composite, and H2O2 can be effectively activated to generate hydroxyl radical for organic pollutants rapid degradation. The construction of phospholipid membranes and embedded CNTs not only maintains the photodegradation performance of the material, but also restrains its environmental risk. Such a synthetic approach advances the development of bionic photocatalytic materials. This work rationally designs an environmentally friendly vesicle-structured photocatalyst by employing magnetic layered double oxide-hollow spheres@antimony tin oxide as a core, phospholipid as membrane, and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as channels, yielding a multi-structural material with robust organic pollutants photocatalytic degradation and mineralization ability. The use of bionic photocatalytic materials avoids potential environmental risks.image