Elemental imprinting-induced interfacial growth strategy to bridge g-C3N4 and Bi2MoO6 with engineering rapid electron transfer pathway for efficient visible light-driven photocatalysis

[Display omitted] •BMO/Bi-CN is constructed by an elemental imprinting-induced interfacial growth strategy.•N–Bi–O bond bridging BMO and CN enhances interfacial stability and charge transfer.•Ohmic contact between Bi and BMO promotes internal electric field of heterojunction.•A rapid electron transfer pathway in BMO/Bi-CN endows high photocatalytic activity.•Ciprofloxacin is effectively degraded and mineralized over the BMO/Bi-CN catalyst. Internal electric field (IEF) of heterojunction photocatalysts is considered as the potent driving force for efficient charge separation, however, the presence of high energy barrier and poor interfacial stability in nascent heterojunctions hinder interfacial charge separation and migration. In this study, an elemental imprinting-induced interfacial growth strategy was proposed to bridge g-C3N4 (CN) and Bi2MoO6 (BMO) for synthesizing BMO/Bi-CN Z-scheme heterojunction photocatalyst by creating an essentially connected porous network to enable easy transfer of the guest material to the binding sites. The established interfacial N–Bi–O bonds enhanced the stability of heterojunction and served as rapid channels for charge transfer, effectively promoting the migration rate and separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers. Particularly, the Ohmic contact between the interface significantly reduced the interfacial energy barrier. Experimental and theoretical analyses demonstrate that the interfacial chemical bonds and Ohmic contact reinforced the IEF and significantly enhanced the photocatalytic performance of BMO/Bi-CN, achieving complete degradation of ciprofloxacin with a kinetic rate constant of 0.0481 min−1. This strategy plays a crucial role in establishing interfacial chemical bonds and optimizing heterogeneous structure of composite photocatalysts.