Facile in situ synthesis of Ag and Bi co-decorated BiOCl heterojunction with high photocatalytic performance over the full solar spectrum

Full-spectrum-responsive Ag/Bi/BiOCl hierarchical micro-flower heterojunction via a facile in-situ solvothermal route. The samples were characterized by XRD , SEM, TEM , XPS , BET and UV–Vis–NIR. The in-situ incorporation of Bi into the semiconductor BiOCl nanosheets with oxygen vacancies could be regulated efficiently by the Ag + additive content. The samples presented a strong optical absorption in the whole region of 200–2400 nm and displayed excellent photocatalytic performance over the full solar spectrum. The presence of metallic Ag, Bi and oxygen vacancies strengthened the light absorption and promoted the charge-carrier separation of BiOCl, resulted in higher photocatalytic activity than that of pure BiOCl and P25 under UV and visible light irradiation. Furthermore, the photocatalytic responsiveness of Ag/Bi/BiOCl was successfully extended to the NIR region. On the basis of the radical species trapping experiments, h + , •O 2 − , and •OH were confirmed to be the mainly active species involved in the degradation of organic pollutants in the NIR region.