Supramolecularly Stabilized Corrole Complex Anchored onto Recyclable Magnetic Beads for Robust Photochemical Elimination of Multiple Antibiotics.

Abstract

Although photochemical antibiotic degradation based on particulate photocatalysts represents a promising strategy for green water treatment, it faces significant hurdles regarding catalyst activity, stability, and recoverability. To overcome these limitations, we report a magnetically recyclable photocatalyst engineered by the supramolecular encapsulation of a highly active phosphorus corrole photosensitizer within a chitosan matrix, followed by covalent immobilization onto Fe₃O₄ magnetic beads. The formation of extended hydrogen-bonding networks between the corrole and chitosan host markedly enhances the photostability of the corrole, while the magnetic core ensures rapid catalyst recovery without compromising the intrinsic photoactivity. Under natural sunlight, the composite achieves >99% removal of 10 structurally diverse antibiotics from authentic hospital wastewater, maintaining efficacy over 8 consecutive cycles with negligible mass loss (<0.1 mg). Notably, using tetracycline as a representative probe substrate, the system exhibits a mass-normalized pseudo-first-order rate constant of 1.24 × 10⁴ min^-1 g^-1 (AM 1.5G), outperforming the best-performing heterogeneous photocatalyst reported to date by approximately 3 orders of magnitude. This work represents an effective strategy to unlock the photochemical potential of corrole in wastewater treatment and may be extended to other fields such as fine-chemical synthesis, clean fuel production, etc.