A Microbial Induced Synthesis of Hydroxyapatite with High UV Light Photocatalytic Activity for Tetracycline Degradation

More and more new materials have been developed, but the research on the development and utilization of the single-phase materials has been neglected. Assembled from nano-particles, a high specific surface area and porous hydroxyapatite (BI-HA) has been synthesized by feasible bacterial induction. The surface structure and morphology of the nanocomposites were characterized by Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) apparatus, X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results suggest the obtained BI-HA powder with porous morphology, which were composed of nanoparticles with (100) crystal plane. The photoactivity of different HA samples was evaluated by the photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline hydrochloride (TC). The HA with (100) crystal plane displayed an obviously enhanced photocatalytic activity (75.33–86.43% for 60 min). Combined with experiments and DFT calculations, for the BI-HA with (100) crystal plane, it displayed better photocatalytic performance for photodegradation of TC. This study provides a viewpoint to fabricate high-performance nonmetal photocatalyst for wastewater treatment.