Strategic growth engineering of Ag self-doped Ag2CO3 on MIL-53 MOF: A novel p-n heterostructure facilitates serendipitous charge migration and remarkable multimodal photocatalytic activity

The significance of influencing the transit of photoinduced exciton is to replicate the intrinsic power of natural photosynthesis using Z-scheme-based charge-transfer pathway in a p-n heterostructure. Herein, Ag2CO3 was incorporated within an MIL-53 (Fe) MOF matrix to synthesize MAC-X hybrid p-n heterostructure that had remarkable photocatalytic activity. The optimal photocatalyst MAC-30 showed the highest photocatalytic efficiency towards RhB degradation with rate constant (0.025 min−1) which was 3.57 and 4.16 times more than pristine Ag2CO3 and MIL-53 respectively. The MAC-30 photocatalyst also exhibited superior photocatalytic H2 evolution (1346 μmol.h−1.g−1) with apparent conversion efficiency of 8.59%. Self-reduced Ag nanoparticle in MAC-X composites acts as an electron mediator in the Z-scheme mechanism path to improve the photocatalytic performances. Additionally, the MAC-30 heterostructure exhibits better stability even after five consecutive catalytic cycles. This study may provide perceptiveness into fabrication of novel p-n heterostructure photocatalytic systems for green energy generation and environmental remediation.