Heterojunction architecture of pTTh nanoflowers with CuOx nanoparticles hybridized for efficient photoelectrocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants

Herein, resulting from the heterojunction engineering, poly-terthiophene (pTTh) hybridized CuOxnanoparticles (abbreviated as CuOx@pTTh) are firstly synthesized and adopted as a promising photoelectrocatalyst for phenol degradation in wastewater. The resultant CuOx@pTTh manifests outstanding light-harvesting ability and remarkable capacity to separate photo-generated electron-hole pairs for phenol degradation in aqueous solution. X-ray photoelectron (XPS) characterizations and theoretical calculations further identify that there exists a strong electronic interaction between CuOx nanoparticles and pTTh, further enhancing the charge carriers transfer dynamics of the as-prepared catalysts. Electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are applied to explore the active species and the degradation mechanism of photoelectrocatalyis (PEC) reactions. It is found that in PEC degradation of phenol the main active species are ·O2− and ·OH. Also, it can be concluded that phenol can eventually be step by step oxidized to CO2 and H2O through different pathways, according to the different detected intermediates.