Iron Oxide Heterojunction Structure for Photodegradation of Emerging Pollutants
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37134/jsml.vol13.1.5.2025Keywords:
Iron oxide, Nanocomposite, Chlorella vulgaris, Waste black toner inkAbstract
Recently, the rise in the number of emerging pollutants (EPs) being released in the aquatic environment has been a significant global concern. The contaminants are produced in large volumes daily and are illicitly discharged into water resources. However, conventional wastewater treatment facilities are failing in eliminating these pollutants. Hence, a substantially more sustainable and effective removal technique such as photodegradation is demanded to deal with this concern. The photodegradation of wastewater using a semiconductor photocatalyst has been demonstrated to be an effective method due to its efficiency, affordability and simplicity. Iron oxide-based heterojunction is one of the photocatalysts that is more plausible for the treatment of contaminated materials from industrial, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and dyes effluent. Due to their low band gap of 2.2 eV, iron oxide-based materials were identified to have good photocatalytic activity in the presence of ultraviolet (UV) and visible light. This enables iron oxide-based to absorb much of the visible solar spectrum (absorbance edge-alternatively, 600nm). It is also a promising material for photocatalytic treatment and water division applications because of its excellent chemical stability in aquatic media, low cost, abundance and non-toxic nature. In short, iron oxide-based features are useful as a photocatalyst due to its tolerable band gap, wide harvesting of visible light, good stability and recyclability. In this review, the characteristics of iron oxide, iron oxide heterojunction with various morphologies and iron alterations to improve its photocatalytic performance in emerging pollutants will be discussed. Also, we will discuss the integrate procedure of iron oxide with supporting materials and the formation of iron heterojunction with other semiconductive materials. In a nutshell, this article informs about the research to shed some lights on the insight of the potential and basic limitations of iron oxide-based photocatalysts in the treatment of emerging pollutants.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Mohamad Saufi Rosmi, Muhammad Shaiful Aidil Mohd Syafaruddin, Siti Munirah Sidik, Ong Suu Wan, Mohamad Azuwa Mohamed, Suriani Abu Bakar, Lulu’atul Hamidatu Ulya
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