P-n Heterostructured design of decahedral NiS/BiVO4 with efficient charge separation for enhanced photodegradation of organic dyes

Constructing high efficient nanostructured photocatalysts is meaningful for dyeing wastewater treatment . Herein, a new p-n heterostructured photocatalyst of NiS/BiVO 4 (NiS/BVO) was well designed, synthesized and applied to photodegrade anion organic dye. Coupling p-type NiS nanoparticles on n-type decahedral nanostructured BVO cannot obviously increase the specific surface area , but can effectively increase the light harvesting, enhance the photocurrent response, and promote the separation and transfer of the photo-generated electron-holes. As a result, 0.7 molar ratio of NiS/BVO exhibited the best photocatalytic capability of 95.6 % within 90 min irradiation, possessing the highest degradation rate of 1.7970 h −1 , which is almost 16 and 33 times higher than pure BVO (15.8 %, 0.1134 h −1 ) and NiS (7.9 %, 0.0543 h −1 ). Meanwhile, NiS/BVO has well photocatalytic stability in at least five cycling tests.