Polydopamine-Coated Porous Substrates as a Platform for Mineralized β-FeOOH Nanorods with Photocatalysis under Sunlight

Immobilization of photo-Fenton catalysts on porous materials is crucial to the efficiency and stability for water purification. Here we report polydopamine (PDA)-coated porous substrates as a platform for in situ mineralizing β-FeOOH nanorods with enhanced photocatalytic performance under sunlight. The PDA coating plays multiple roles as an adhesive interface, a medium inducing mineral generation, and an electron transfer layer. The mineralized β-FeOOH nanorods perfectly wrap various porous substrates and are stable on the substrates that have a PDA coating. The immobilized β-FeOOH nanorods have been shown to be efficient for degrading dyes in water via a photo-Fenton reaction. The degradation efficiency reaches approximately 100% in 60 min when the reaction was carried out with H2O2 under visible light, and it remains higher than 90% after five cycles. We demonstrate that the PDA coating promotes electron transfer to reduce the electron-hole recombination rate. As a result, the β-FeOOH nanorods wrapped on the PDA-coated substrates show enhanced photocatalytic performance under direct sunlight in the presence of H2O2. Moreover, this versatile platform using porous materials as the substrate is useful in fabricating β-FeOOH nanorods-based membrane reactor for wastewater treatment.