Efficient and regenerative near-infrared glass-ceramic photocatalyst fabricated by a facile in-situ etching method

Abstract

Low cost and large-scale fabrication of high-efficiency near-infrared (NIR) photocatalysts are especially promising for the degradation of organic pollutants. Herein, a facile in-situ etching method by growing BiOCl nanosheets on self-crystallized upconversion SrO-Bi2O3-B2O3 (SBBO) glass-ceramic (GC) is developed to synthesize an efficient NIR GC photocatalyst. Through structure and morphology characterizations, it is found that the NIR GC photocatalyst possesses the core-shell structure, where the SBBO GC micro-powder including optically active centers (Er3+, Yb3+, and Y3+) doped SrF2 nanocrystals are displayed as the core, and the BiOCl is as the superficial coating. The NIR GC photocatalysts can efficiently harvest the NIR photons and emit strong UV (379 nm), violet (408 nm), green (523 and 540 nm), and red (656 nm) light, which are able to be utilized by themselves for photocatalysis. In the degradation of organic pollutants under NIR irradiation for 90 min, high removal rates of 66% (antibiotic norfloxacin) and 79% (methyl orange) are achieved. Furthermore, the NIR GC photocatalyst can be facile regenerated by using HCl etching again, and suitable for large-scale fabrication that will supply a new strategy for development of efficient photocatalyst.