The construction of high efficient visible-light-driven 3D porous g-C3N4/Fe3O4 photocatalyst: A new photo-induced bacterial inactivation material enhanced by cascade photo-Fenton reaction

Photocatalytic disinfection is considered a promising method for eliminating the hazards of pathogenic bacteria. Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) is an ideal photocatalytic bacterial inactivation material for its advantage of tunable band structure, good stability and easy preparation. This work has constructed a novel defective 3D porous g-C3N4 by cyanamide carbonation using dendritic mesoporous silica template. The direct loading of Fe3O4 nanoparticles provided an excellent pg–C3N4–Fe3O4 photocatalyst suitable for water disinfection. Compared to pristine g-C3N4, the prepared 3D porous defective g–C3N4–Fe3O4 exhibited the enhanced visible light absorbance as indicated by the band gap decreasing of 0.66 eV, and about 3 and 10 fold increase of photo-induced current response and O2 adsorption respectively. The pg–C3N4–Fe3O4 showed excellent visible-light-driven photocatalytic bactericidal activity. It could kill 1 × 107 cfu mL−1 Escherichia coli completely within 1 h under visible-light illumination (100 mW cm−2) with good reusability, its logarithmic bacterial inactivation efficiency was about 2.5 fold higher than pg-C3N4. The enhanced bactericidal performance is mainly ascribed to the Fe3O4 involved cascade photo-Fenton reaction.