Carbene Ligand-Doped Fe2O3 Composite for Rapid Removal of Multiple Dyes under Sunlight

Abstract

Contaminated water due to industrial organic dyes presents a significant challenge to sustainability. As a material of green energy, photocatalysts offer an effective and environmentally friendly way to deal with organic dyes for water treatment. A series of simple and highly efficient iron photocatalysts with carbene ligands were developed, which, under the illumination of sunlight, can rapidly degrade multiple organic dyes in water at room temperature, including rhodamine B (RhB), indigo carmine (IC), methyl blue (MB), and congo red (CR). The field-only surface integral method was carried out to determine the absorption spectrum of photocatalyst particles. Under the optimized experimental conditions which were selected by the orthogonal experiments for four dyes, 0.5a@Fe2O3 and 2c@Fe2O3 demonstrated good stability and photocatalytic activity. These two composite materials not only have the ability to remove 98.0% of the degradation in 10 s, but also maintain high reactivity after a few cycles of repeated use.