Carbon doped boron nitride nanosheet as efficient metal-free catalyst for peroxymonosulfate activation: Important role of B-N-C moieties

Developing metal-free catalysts for persulfate-mediated oxidation process has been extensively pursued in environmental remediation, yet the activity of these catalysts is typically low and the mechanism is ambiguous. Herein, a facile one-step pyrolysis method was employed to synthesize the carbon doped boron nitride (C-BN) derived from polydopamine coated BN nanosheets. The C-BN could readily activate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) with the activation energy as low as 14.95 kJ/mol, giving rise to admirable performance for bisphenol A removal even at 0 celcius, which was superior to most reported metal-free catalysts. The combined experimental and density functional theory (DFT) analyses pointed out that the remarkable performance of C-BN originated from the B-N-C moieties, which could induce the electron transfer from catalyst to PMS to promote the fast generation of superoxide radicals (O2 center dot  ) as the dominant reactive species. These findings take a step toward exploring the highly efficient metal-free catalysts for realistic applications.