Search

Environmental regulation is a crucial tool for controlling environmental pollution. Digital finance is essential for the development of green finance. The relationship between environmental regulation and digital finance concerning environmental pollution is an issue worth exploring. This paper uses the spatial econometric model and the panel threshold model to empirically analyze the impact of environmental regulation and digital financial inclusion on environmental pollution using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces between 2011 and 2019. It mainly discusses the independent impact and synergy of environmental regulation and digital inclusive finance on environmental pollution. The research results show that the improvement of the intensity of environmental regulation and the development level of digital-inclusive finance can effectively alleviate the problem of environmental pollution. Moreover, environmental regulation and digital inclusive finance can coordinately control environmental pollution. A panel threshold analysis shows that as the intensity of environmental regulation increases, digital financial inclusion will reflect the function of environmental governance. Similarly, with the development of digital financial inclusion, environmental regulation has shown a significant inhibitory effect on environmental pollution. The results of a heterogeneity analysis show that the intensity of environmental regulation in the eastern region has a significant inhibitory effect on environmental pollution. Digital financial inclusion in the central region shows a strong environmental governance function. The intersection of environmental regulation and digital financial inclusion has shown a significant synergistic governance effect in the eastern region. Therefore, the government gives full play to the functions of environmental regulation and digital inclusive finance environmental governance to achieve coordinated governance of environmental pollution.

The development of digital financial inclusion has added a new vitality to economic growth, and environmental regulation is an important tool to achieve sustainable economic growth. Therefore, whether there is a synergistic effect between these two factors of economic growth is a topic worth exploring. This paper uses the space econometric model and threshold model to explore the impact of digital financial inclusion and environmental regulation on regional economic growth using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces, collected between 2011 and 2019. The research results prove that the development of digital financial inclusion and the improvement in the intensity of environmental regulation have a significant direct promotion effect and negative spatial spillover effect on regional economic growth. Moreover, the two have a significant synergistic effect on regional economic growth. A panel threshold analysis showed that, with the improvement in the level of digital financial inclusion, the regression coefficient of environmental regulation changed from negative to positive, which played a significant role in promoting regional economic growth. The heterogeneity analysis found that digital inclusive finance in eastern regions of China plays a greater role in promoting the economy, whereas environmental regulation in the central region plays a greater role in promoting the economy. The synergy between the two in the central region greatly promotes economic development. When digital inclusive finance is used as the threshold variable, environmental regulation in eastern and western regions has a single-threshold effect on regional economic development. Based upon these research results, this paper proposes that a coordination mechanism between digital financial inclusion and environmental regulation should be established to give full play to their synergies in sustainable economic growth.

Heterojunction photocatalysts composed of CdIn2S4 (CIS) nanocrystals and graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets (CN) have been synthesized using a simple two-step wet chemistry method. In this system, CN nanosheets not only act as a substrate for the growth and uniform distribution of CIS nanocrystals but also play a key role in the photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants with high efficiency. The CdIn2S4/g-C3N4 (CIS/CN) heterojunction photocatalysts exhibited better photocatalytic activity than that of pristine CIS and CN in photocatalytic degradation of both an organic dye (methyl orange) and an antibiotic (tetracycline hydrochloride). The enhanced photocatalytic performance might be ascribed to the formation of a heterojunction structure with strong interface interaction, which is beneficial to the photoinduced charge transfer between CIS and CN and efficient to accelerate the seperation of photogenerated electrons and holes. The as-synthesized heterojunction photocatalysts also showed good photocatalytic stability. After four cycles, the photocatalytic activity almost remains unchanged. The heterojunction photocatalysts with excellent photocatalytic performance and reusability may provide a new sight in the development of a photocatalyst with high efficiency for practical application of water purification.

A g-C3N4/nanocarbon/ZnIn2S4 (CN/C/ZIS) nanocomposite with enhanced photocatalytic H2 production performance has been successfully synthesized. Based on the experimental results, for the first time, it has been demonstrated that nanocarbon could be integrated into a Z-scheme photocatalytic system and acted as an excellent solid electron mediator.

In this work, ZnS microsphere/g-C3N4 nanocomposites with different ZnS contents were synthesized by a facile precipitation route and characterized by a variety of techniques. The TEM results confirmed that ZnS microspheres are deposited on the surface of g-C3N4 nanosheets with intimate contact in the nanocomposites. Such type-II heterostructures formed between ZnS and g-C3N4 can unexpectedly improve the photocatalytic H2-production rate of g-C3N4 under visible light, which reaches an optimal value of up to 194 μmol h−1 g−1 at the ZnS content of 50 wt%. The synergistic effect of ZnS and g-C3N4 was proposed to be responsible for the efficient separation of the photogenerated charge carriers and, consequently, the enhancement of the visible light photocatalytic H2 production activity of the nanocomposites. This work highlights that the integration of g-C3N4 and ZnS will be an opportunity to obtain a g-C3N4-based nanocomposite photocatalyst with enhanced photocatalytic H2 production activity, and we hope our work may be helpful for the construction of photocatalysts with efficient visible light H2-production activities.

We report on the fabrication of silica/zinc oxide/zinc sulfide nanoparticles (SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs) wrapped with thermoresponsive molecularly imprinted polymers (TMIPs) for photocatalysis (PC) applications. TMIPs were prepared via surface-initiated reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (SI-RAFT) polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAm) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA), rendering the material solution accessible and temperature sensitive. Photodegradation of sulfadiazine (SD) was used as a probe to evaluate the effect of coated TMIPs on the PC performance of SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs. The results showed that TMIPs made SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs have an outstanding specific affinity PC activity toward template SD. Modification of SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs with Ag2S resulted in a tunable PC ability of the prepared material. For SI-RAFT conducted in a controlled manner, a thin layer of polymers (∼100 nm) formed around NPs was measured by a transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Also the polymers were characteri...