The Development of M3+-Doped Mesoporous Ti4O7 Electrode for Pharmaceutical Degradation in Fresh Human Urine

Abstract

An ideal electrode material for pharmaceutical degradation should be efficient, low-cost, and stable. However, none of the well-studied anode material has a lifetime of more than 400 hours. In this work, we fabricate metal with valence number three (M3+) doped-mesoporous Ti4O7 planner electrodes. The electrode stability and pharmaceutical degradation performance are collected by galvanostatic test and pharmaceutical degradation rate in a full synthetic urine matrix with four common pharmaceuticals. Our results show that the Cobalt (Co3+) doped-mesoporous Ti4O7 electrodes have a 30 hours lifetime and were able to degrade 96.7% sulfamethoxazole (SMX) within 60 minutes. In conclusion, the Co-doped mesoporous Ti4O7 electrodes have better stability than previous well-studied electrode materials and cheaper fabrication cost than boron-doped diamond electrodes. The electrode lifetime of the Co-doped mesoporous Ti4O7 electrode still can be further improved by increasing Co loading.