SnO₂ aerogel deposited onto polymer-derived carbon foam for environmental remediation

Carbon-based composite materials with high specific surface areas have drawn significant interest in photocatalytic wastewater treatment. Herein, a porous SnO₂ aerogel@polymer-derived carbon (PDC) composite was fabricated via an emulsion polymerization followed by epoxide-assisted gelation approach. The enhancement of photocatalytic activity could be mainly attributed to the synergistic effect between the rutile and porous SnO₂ aerogel and carbon, which was found to enhance the electron–hole separation, necessary to improve photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants. In addition, the SnO₂ aerogel@PDC composite catalyst can be easily separated from dye solution without centrifugation and filtration due to its foam structure. In comparison with the pristine SnO₂ aerogel, the SnO₂ aerogel@PDC composite photocatalyst exhibited a substantial improvement in the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye degradation under UV-light irradiation (~60% degradation vs. ~90% degradation, respectively). The photodegradation reaction of MB over the SnO₂ aerogel@PDC composite photocatalyst under UV-light illumination shows pseudo-first-order kinetics, with a rate constant (k) almost 1.5-fold larger than that of the pristine SnO₂ aerogel. This facile construction provides insights into designing new three-dimensional (3D) materials as photocatalysts.