Gangqiang Zhu,Mirabbos Hojamberdiev,Shaolin Zhang,Syed Taj Ud Din,Woochul Yang
In order to further improve its photocatalytic activity , the BiOI microspheres were activated by a synchronous coupling of Bi metal and graphene under solvothermal conditions. The effects of the synthesis temperature (160–200 °C) on crystallinity, morphology, and photocatalytic activity were studied in particular. As expected, the ternary Bi-BiOI/graphene photocatalyst synthesized at 180 °C exhibited higher photocatalytic activity for NO oxidation removal under visible light irradiation than individual BiOI, and binary Bi-BiOI and BiOI/graphene composites. The photocatalytic efficiency for the NO removal of the ternary Bi-BiOI/graphene photocatalyst synthesized at 180 °C reached 51.8% within 30 min of visible light irradiation. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of the ternary Bi-BiOI/graphene photocatalyst is attributed to (I) the efficient transfer of photo-generated electrons from BiOI and Bi to graphene, leading to the effective separation of the photo-generated electron-hole pairs and (II) the surface plasmon resonance effect of Bi nanoparticles in the composite photocatalyst. Furthermore, the results of the scavenger experiments and DMPO-ESR spin-trapping measurements reveal that O 2 − radical species play the most critical role and holes serve as a secondary active species in the oxidative removal process of NO by 180BOI/GR composite under visible light irradiation.
The introduction of oxygen-defects has been a versatile strategy to enhance photocatalysis efficiency. In this work, a 2D/3D Bi/BiO 2-x /Bi 2 WO 6 heterojunction photocatalyst with rich oxygen-defective was in sequence prepared through a facile solvothermal method , which displays favorable photocatalytic activity towards organic contaminants under visible-NIR light irradiation . The enhancement in photocatalytic performance can be attributed to the synergistic effect between oxygen-vacancy-rich heterojunction and the localized surface plasmon resonance induced by metallic Bi. The functional group interaction, surface morphology , crystal structure, element composition , and tuned bandgap were investigated by FT-IR, SEM, Raman shift, ICP-MS, and XPS technique. The spectrum response performance of the photocatalyst was verified by UV–visible DRS analysis. Results of photodegradation experiments toward organic contaminants showed that the prepared photocatalyst can degrade 90% of phenol in 20 mins under visible-NIR light irradiation, both Z-scheme heterojunction and the introduction of Bi metal contribute to the enhancement in the photocatalytic activity. The results of the DFT calculation suggest that the valence band-edge hybridization within BiO 2-x and Bi 2 WO 6 can effectively enhance the photocatalytic performance by increasing the migration efficiencies of electron-hole pairs. Moreover, a possible mechanism was proposed on the results of EIS, ESR and GC–MS tests. This work offers a novel insight for synthesizing efficient visible-NIR light photocatalysis by activating the semiconductors with Bi metal.