LAUSR

Abstract The treatment of water pollution is faced with a severe postgraduate examination, which shows that pollutants of different properties, such as water-soluble and non-water-soluble pollutants, exist at the same time. In this paper, superhydrophobic S-ZnO/BiOBr cotton (SH cotton) is designed, which has the ability to degrade water-soluble pollutants through light response and the performance of selective removal of organic solvents. The water contact angle of droplets on the surface of the material reached 162°, on which toluene spread rapidly. When applied to an environment with water-soluble pollutants, the material showed an excellent cyclic degradation ability, and the degradation efficiency of 5 cycles’ was higher than 98.4%. Importantly, the 3 cycles of outdoor degradation efficiency was higher than 92.1% under the actual working conditions. The VB positions of the S-ZnO and BiOBr were calculated to be 2.89 eV and 2.96 eV, respectively. The CB positions of the S-ZnO and BiOBr were calculated to be −0.31 eV and 0.38 eV, respectively.