Laterally oriented spinel Co₃O₄ on layered aluminosilicate for sonocatalytic wastewater treatment

Layered materials play a crucial role in developing catalytic materials thanks to their wide diversity and nanoscale in one dimension and large size in two other dimensions. In this research, we engineered the lateral growth of cobalt oxide on a layered aluminosilicate material (montmorillonite, MMT), where the stacked MMT layers are exfoliated through bursting exfoliation. Here, we demonstrate that the synthesized material is an efficient catalyst for removing pollution when applied in water treatment. A set of characterizations indicates the growth of Co₃O₄ on the layered oxides. We demonstrate that the synthesized catalysts are promising in oxytetracycline (OTC) removal through the sonocatalysis of (Co₃O₄)_4.5-MMT_exf. Radical scavengers and o-phenylenediamine (OPDA) as a trapping agent implies the sonocatalytic removal process, corroborating the hydroxyl radical generation that proceeds with the degradation. The cobalt oxide loaded MMT as a catalyst also shows viability and reusability for several uses after each recovery. Analyzing the intermediates of the degraded OTC by the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis reveals that a significant fraction of the OTC has degraded and mineralized, and we barely observed the partially degraded bulk molecules.