Construction of TiO 2- x Confined by Layered Iron Silicate toward Efficient Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalysis-Fenton Synergistic Removal of Organic Pollutants.

The photocatalysis-Fenton synergistic reaction has great potential for water purification but generally suffers from unsatisfactory electron transfer due to an undesirable interface structure. Herein, we developed a novel heterojunction of oxygen vacancy-rich TiO 2- x confined in the layer space of a synthetic montmorillonite-like iron silicate (denoted as TiO 2- x /FeMMT) that addresses the issue mentioned above. Two-dimensional layered montmorillonite-like silicates in heterojunctions as a support not only provided more active sites for the reaction but also induced oxygen vacancies in TiO 2- x through interfacial effects to enhance the visible-light harvesting ability. Notably, such loading TiO 2- x as an electron donor accelerated the Fe(III)/Fe(II) redox cycling and facilitated the effective activation of H 2 O 2 , while Fe(III) in the montmorillonite-like silicate as electron trap sites greatly improved the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. More interestingly, the internal electric field and oxygen vacancies (Vo) existing at the interface realized the directional migration of photogenerated electrons and improved the energy band structure of the heterojunction, respectively. Eventually, the TiO 2- x /FeMMT composites exhibited superior photocatalysis-Fenton performance toward degradation removal of phenol, dinotefuran (DIN), and sulfamethoxazole (SMX) under visible-light irradiation. This paves the way for the rational design of high-efficiency heterojunction catalysts based on layered silicates for environment-related applications.