Significantly enhanced Fenton-like degradation activity over oxygen vacancies introduced FeOOH through synergistic effect between active species.

FeOOH is regarded as an effective Fenton-like catalyst due to its green nature and wide availability. However, its low utilization efficiency of H₂O₂ and the sole role of ·OH radical for organic pollutant always result in relatively low degradation activity. Based on this, oxygen vacancies (OVS) are introduced into FeOOH to improve its degradation performance. The experimental results show that the degradation rate of tetracycline (20 ppm) reach 0.074 min⁻¹ over FeOOH-OVS-200 obtained under the optimum preparation condition, nearly 2.96 times higher than the pristine one. Meanwhile, the mineralization degree increased by 2.38 times as well. The significantly enhanced activity was contributed to the 2.37 times higher H₂O₂ utilization efficiency originated from the promoted Fe²⁺/Fe³⁺ cycle, as well as the synergistic degradation effect from ·OH radical and non-radical ¹O₂. The present work provides a novel strategy for designing efficient Fenton-like catalysts.