Dataset associated with "Oxygen Vacancy-Engineered Bi2O2CO3 Nanosheets for Enhanced Photodegradation of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in Water"

Defect engineering has emerged as a versatile approach for tailoring the properties of materials to meetspecific functional applications and improve their properties. In the context of environmental remediation,the introduction of surface oxygen vacancies in semiconductor materials has demonstrated to be a highlyeffective strategy to enhance molecular adsorption and contaminants' degradation. Herein, we reportedthe synthesis of Bi2O2CO3 nanosheets with surface oxygen vacancies (OVs) via the controlled addition ofan accessible, non-toxic and versatile ionic liquid, choline hydroxide. The presence of OVs was confirmedby X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electrochemical techniques, including cyclic voltammetry(CV) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). Upon optimizing the concentration of choline hydroxide, itwas found that the addition of 10% of choline hydroxide yielded a material, Chol10%-Bi2O2CO3, withsignificantly enhanced adsorptive and photocatalytic performance. This material efficiently removed notonly antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin (97.5% in 20 min) and sulfamethoxazole (98.5% in 60 min), but also aUV filter compound, benzophenone-4 (92.4% in 180 min), which are representative of pharmaceuticalsand personal care products (PPCPs) of high environmental concern. Mechanistic studies into reactiveoxygen species involved in the photocatalytic process, together with a thorough study of the energy bandstructure, revealed that Chol10%-Bi2O2CO3 generates both hydroxyl (OH·) and superoxide (·O2−) radicals, which are essential for the efficient degradation of the recalcitrant UV filter compound, showing thepotential of oxygen vacancy-engineered Bi2O2CO3 nanosheets as promising platforms for waterpurification and environmental remediation applications.