Facile synthesis of defect induced CeO2/MIL-53(Fe) nanocatalyst: Strategically switching the charge transfer dynamics for remarkable enhancement of photocatalytic Bisphenol A degradation and H2 evolution

This work reports the fabrication of heterojunction between defect induced CeO2 and iron based metal organic framework (MIL-53). A simple chemical redox etching methodology was adopted to narrow the band gap of pristine CeO2 through oxygen vacancy engineering. The photocatalytic efficacy of defect induced CeO2/MIL-53 (MCO-X) heterojunction was studied in Bisphenol A (BPA) breakdown and photocatalytic hydrogen generation from water splitting. The significantly improved photocatalytic application of MCO-X heterojunction could be attributed to the switching of charge dynamics mechanism from Type-1 to Type-II due to defect formation in the pristine CeO2. The optimal photocatalyst (MCO-30) displayed the highest photocatalytic BPA degradation with rate constant (0.045 min−1) and H2 evolution (3286.2 μmol.h−1. g−1) respectively. This study provides a comprehensive analysis on how defect in pristine CeO2 in MCO-X heterojunction can switch the charge transfer mechanism from Type-1 to Type-II to achieve remarkable visible light harnessing capacity and photocatalytic activity.