UV-Vis Activated CuO/SnO/WO Heterostructure for Photocatalytic Removal of Pesticides.

A three-steps sol-gel method was used to obtain a CuO/SnO/WO heterostructure powder, deposited as film by spray pyrolysis. The porous morphology of the final heterostructure was constructed starting with fiber-like WO acting as substrate for SnO development. The SnO/WO sample provide nucleation and grew sites for CuO formation. Diffraction evaluation indicated that all samples contained crystalline structures with crystallite size varying from 42.4 Å (CuO) to 81.8 Å (WO). Elemental analysis confirmed that the samples were homogeneous in composition and had an oxygen excess due to the annealing treatments. Photocatalytic properties were tested in the presence of three pesticides-pirimicarb, S-metolachlor (S-MCh), and metalaxyl (MET)-chosen based on their resilience and toxicity. The photocatalytic activity of the CuO/SnO/WO heterostructure was compared with WO, SnO, CuO, CuO/SnO, CuO/WO, and SnO/WO samples. The results indicated that the three-component heterostructure had the highest photocatalytic efficiency toward all pesticides. The highest photocatalytic efficiency was obtained toward S-MCh (86%) using a CuO/SnO/WO sample and the lowest correspond to MET (8.2%) removal using a CuO monocomponent sample. TOC analysis indicated that not all the removal efficiency could be attributed to mineralization, and by-product formation is possible. CuO/SnO/WO is able to induce 81.3% mineralization of S-MCh, while CuO exhibited 5.7% mineralization of S-MCh. The three-run cyclic tests showed that CuO/SnO/WO, WO, and SnO/WO exhibited good photocatalytic stability without requiring additional procedures. The photocatalytic mechanism corresponds to a Z-scheme charge transfer based on a three-component structure, where CuO exhibits reduction potential responsible for O production and WO has oxidation potential responsible for HO· generation.