Construction of flake ball-shaped Bi2WO6 embedded on phenyl functionalized g-C3N4 nanosheet for efficient degradation insight of colorless pollutants and its biological application

A facile solvent-free solid-state method was adapted to synthesize the spherical-shaped BiWO engraved on phenyl-doped g-CN nanosheet, i.e., BiWO/Ph-gCN (or BPCN) composites with varying weights of BiWO. Several spectral analyses were used to characterize all the synthesized nanomaterials. The synthesized photocatalyst showed good absorption under visible light as confirmed by UV-visible DRS analysis. Morphological analyses like SEM and TEM determine the successful fabrication of binary heterocomposite. Further, the elements available in the fabricated binary nanocomposite were confirmed by XPS. The photocatalyst was used for the aerobic photocatalytic degradation of a few colorless pollutants like bisphenol A (BPA, 30 mg L), a microplastic constituent, and tetracycline (TC, 40 mg L), an antibiotic derivative to achieve the impressive results. The less intense PL signal obtained for the 20BPCN heterocomposite reveals the remarkable enhancement in e-h pair separation and recombination rate. The quenching study, alkaline terephthalic acid photoluminescence test (TA-PL), and NBT phototransformation study explain the formation of reactive species involved in the decomposition process. An oral cancer cell line (A-254) was tested for the anticancer activity analysis of the 20BPCN photocatalyst. Based on the obtained results, a Z-scheme electron transfer mechanism has been proposed for the photodegradation of model compounds.