Sulfur-Tweaked Catalyst Splits Water and Destroys Antibiotics With One Material

Researchers have unveiled a single multifunctional material that can do two jobs at once: help split water into clean hydrogen fuel and break down one of the most stubborn antibiotic pollutants found in rivers and wastewater. The team, led by Dae Sung Lee of Kyungpook National University in South Korea, together with collaborators across India, Chile, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia, reports its findings in the journal Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials. The work centers on a carefully engineered hybrid catalyst built from vanadium pentoxide and a sulfur-modified form of a carbon nitride polymer, a combination that dramatically improves both electrocatalysis and light-driven pollution destruction.

The core problem the researchers set out to solve is one that has haunted the clean energy and water treatment fields for years. Electrochemical water splitting, which uses electricity to pull water molecules apart into hydrogen and oxygen, is one of the most promising routes to green hydrogen, but it demands large amounts of extra energy because the half-reactions at the electrodes are sluggish. Meanwhile, photocatalytic advanced oxidation processes, which use light-activated catalysts to generate reactive molecules that shred organic pollutants, are hampered by the fact that excited electrons and holes tend to recombine almost instantly, wasting the absorbed light energy before it can do useful chemistry. Catalysts also tend to degrade over time, undermining long-term operation.

To attack both problems simultaneously, the team synthesized a family of composite materials by coupling vanadium pentoxide, a well-known transition metal oxide, with graphitic carbon nitride in two forms: an unmodified version abbreviated CN and a sulfur-modified version abbreviated SCN. By varying the amount of the sulfur-modified carbon nitride, they produced three composites containing 10, 20 and 30 weight percent of the modified polymer, labeled VSCN-1, VSCN-2 and VSCN-3 respectively. The idea behind this interfacial engineering is that when two semiconductors with different electronic structures are brought into intimate contact, the junction between them creates an internal electric field that sweeps charge carriers apart, keeping electrons and holes separated long enough for them to drive chemical reactions.

The star performer was VSCN-2, the composite with 20 weight percent sulfur-modified carbon nitride. When deposited on nickel foam, a common conductive support for electrodes, and tested in a concentrated potassium hydroxide electrolyte, the material required an overpotential of just 250 millivolts to drive the oxygen evolution reaction at a current density of 10 milliamperes per square centimeter. For the hydrogen evolution reaction, the overpotential was an impressively low 89 millivolts at the same current density. Overpotentials are the extra voltage beyond the thermodynamic minimum that must be applied to make a reaction proceed at a useful rate, so lower values translate directly into lower energy consumption and cheaper hydrogen.

Equally important for real-world deployment is how the catalyst behaves over time, and here the results were equally striking. The measured Tafel slopes, which describe how quickly current rises as voltage is increased, came in at 68 millivolts per decade for the oxygen reaction and 109 millivolts per decade for the hydrogen reaction, indicating favorable reaction kinetics on the modified surface. The electrode also operated stably for 60 hours without significant loss of activity, a duration that rules out the rapid degradation that plagues many experimental catalysts. When two identical VSCN-2 electrodes were paired into a full water-splitting electrolyzer, the device needed only 1.55 volts to sustain 10 milliamperes per square centimeter and kept running steadily for 80 hours, edging close to the 1.48-volt thermodynamic benchmark that defines an ideal electrolyzer.

The same material proved remarkably adept at a completely different task: destroying tetracycline, a widely used antibiotic that escapes into waterways through agricultural runoff and pharmaceutical wastewater. Residual antibiotics in the environment are a serious concern because they promote the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria, so finding efficient ways to degrade them is a growing research priority. Under irradiation from ordinary light-emitting diodes, the VSCN-2 composite achieved 99 percent removal of tetracycline through a process called sonophotocatalysis, which combines ultrasonic agitation with light activation. The ultrasound generates microscopic cavitation bubbles in the water that collapse violently, producing additional reactive species and improving mass transport, while the illuminated catalyst generates electron-hole pairs that attack the pollutant. The synergy between the two energy inputs pushes degradation rates well beyond what either light or sound alone can achieve.

Durability carried over to the photocatalytic application as well. The composite retained its degradation activity across repeated use cycles, suggesting that the interfacial structure is robust rather than a fleeting artifact of fresh synthesis. To understand which reactive species were actually doing the work of shredding the tetracycline molecule, the researchers performed radical-scavenging experiments, in which specific chemicals are added to selectively neutralize particular reactive species, alongside electron spin resonance spectroscopy, which detects short-lived radicals directly. Both approaches pointed to superoxide radicals and hydroxyl radicals as the dominant destructive agents, which in turn supported the proposed charge transfer mechanism operating across the vanadium pentoxide and sulfur-modified carbon nitride interface.

The team went further than simply confirming that the antibiotic disappeared. Using liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, they identified the intermediate products formed as the tetracycline molecule was progressively broken apart, and then used the ECOSAR predictive software to estimate the toxicity of those fragments. Encouragingly, the analysis indicated that the degradation pathway leads toward products with lower predicted toxicity than the parent antibiotic, meaning the process genuinely detoxifies the water rather than merely converting one harmful compound into another. This combination of mechanistic spectroscopy, product identification and toxicity prediction represents the kind of thorough evidence chain that regulators and engineers need before such technologies can move from the laboratory toward practical water treatment systems.

What makes this study notable in a crowded field of catalyst papers is the deliberate dual-function design. Most catalysts are optimized for a single reaction and a single application, but the underlying physics that limits both technologies, namely the wasteful recombination of charge carriers and sluggish interfacial charge transfer, is shared. By engineering a heterostructure in which the sulfur modification tunes the electronic structure of the carbon nitride and the intimate junction with vanadium pentoxide accelerates charge separation, the researchers addressed both limitations with one material. The sulfur atoms in the carbon nitride framework are thought to adjust the band positions and introduce active sites, while the oxide-polymer interface acts as a highway for electrons migrating in one direction and holes in the other, depending on whether the driving force is an applied voltage or absorbed light.

The implications stretch across the clean energy and environmental technology landscape. A catalyst that can lower the voltage needed for hydrogen production could reduce the cost of green hydrogen, which remains a key stumbling block for the hydrogen economy, while the same chemistry applied to polluted water offers a low-energy route to eliminating pharmaceutical contaminants using nothing more than LEDs and ultrasound. The work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea through its Basic Science Research Program, with additional funding from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. As laboratories worldwide race to design multifunctional materials that squeeze more value from every input of energy, this sulfur-modified heterostructure stands as a compelling demonstration that clever interfacial engineering can turn two hard problems into one elegant solution.

Subject of Research: Sulfur-modified g-C3N5/V2O5 heterostructure catalysts for electrochemical water splitting and sonophotocatalytic antibiotic degradation

Article Title: Interfacial engineering of sulfur-modified g-C3N5/V2O5 heterostructures for enhanced overall water splitting and sonophotocatalytic tetracycline degradation

Article References: Kumaravel, S., Durai, M., Gnanasekaran, L., Kumaravel, S., Erusappan, E., Shanmugapriya, D., Afzal, M., Paskalis, S. M. K., & Lee, D. S. (2026). Interfacial engineering of sulfur-modified g-C3N5/V2O5 heterostructures for enhanced overall water splitting and sonophotocatalytic tetracycline degradation. Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-026-02085-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s42114-026-02085-y

Keywords: electrocatalysis, water splitting, hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, photocatalysis, sonophotocatalysis, tetracycline degradation, g-C3N5, V2O5, heterostructure, sulfur modification, advanced oxidation processes