Fabrication of nanostructured flowerlike p-BiOI/p-NiO heterostructure and its efficient photocatalytic performance in water treatment under visible-light irradiation

Abstract

Bismuth-related nanomaterials have received intense attention as potential promising photocatalysts for environment remediation. BiOI is well-known due to efficient photocatalytic activity, high stability, low cost and nontoxicity. In this study, novel nanostructured high-yield visible-light-induced photocatalyst p-BiOI/p-NiO was synthesized by a facile solvothermal method. Several characterization methods, such as X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area, photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) were employed to study the phase structures, morphologies and optical properties of the samples. The photocatalytic properties of the as-prepared products were measured with the degradation of acid orange 7 (AO7) at room temperature under visible light illumination. It was found that the NiO amount in the BiOI/NiO composites played an important role in the corresponding photocatalytic properties. The best performance was achieved at 10% content. Enhanced photocatalytic activity of the composites was due to the improved photogenerated carrier separation capacity due to suitable heterojunction formation. In addition the mechanism was proposed for the coupled semiconductors. The reusability of nanophotocatalyst and effects of pH, dye concentration and photocatalyst dosage were also investigated.