Strategic Fitting of Chitosan in Z-Scheme-Enabled Binary Nanoheterojunction Improves the Electron Flow Dynamics

Incorporating biopolymeric materials in existing photocatalytic and sensing systems is a popular strategy to enhance the green footprint of the process. However, due to their poor conductivity and textural attributes, the advancements made using such biopolymer inclusion strategies are merely incremental. This work proposes a biopolymer inclusion-based strategy to enhance the charge-transfer dynamics of the conventional semiconducting heterostructures to enhance both the sensing and photocatalytic efficiency of existing systems. Precisely, chitosan (CH) was strategically coupled with a Z-scheme-enabled ZnO/Bi2WO6 composite. The coupling process of the components was intricately engineered in a way that facilitated the separation of charge carriers, which played a critical role in enhancing both the sensing and photocatalytic performance of the ternary system against 4-nitrophenol (PNP). In photocatalytic tests, CH/ZnO/Bi2WO6 showed a maximum removal efficiency of 97.5% compared to 92.4% shown by ZnO/Bi2WO6. Besides, the CH/ZnO/Bi2WO6 system also exhibited the best sensing performance for PNP with an excellent LOD and sensitivity of 430 nM and 78.535 μA μM–1 cm–2, respectively. With these outcomes, this study proposes a robust design strategy to incorporate nonconducting, green biopolymeric materials to develop multifunctional nanoconjugates for exploring various critical applications in the domain of environmental remediation and material science.