Photothermocatalytic Sterilization Activity Enhancement and Mechanism Evaluation of WO3/TpPa-1/N-Nb2CTx Constructed with a 2D Z-type Heterojunction WO3/TpPa-1 and 2D Co-Catalyst Nb2CTx

Foodborne pathogens are the main factors causing food poisoning, and it is of great significance to develop novel nanocomposites to obtain efficient and stable photothermal-assisted photocatalysts for killing foodborne pathogens. In this paper, Z-type heterojunction WO3/TpPa-1 with a core-shell structure was constructed by in-situ synthesis, and the Nb2CTx was used as a co-catalyst to obtain an efficient ternary composite WO3/TpPa-1/N-Nb2CTx. Compared to the monomers, the ternary composites improved light trapping, interfacial separation effectiveness, and the mobility of photogenerated carriers. The WO3/TpPa-1/15% N-Nb2CTx has the best sterilization efficiency of 99.69% under visible-infrared light irradiation for 30 min. The construction of WO3/TpPa-1/N-Nb2CTx promoted the separation of electron and hole pairs, which improved the electron transport efficiency and the generation of reactive oxygen species. In addition, the excellent photothermal effect of Nb2CTx improves the sterilization performance of WO3/TpPa-1/N-Nb2CTx. The WO3/TpPa-1/N-Nb2CTx has a broad application prospect in photothermal-assisted photocatalytic sterilization.