Novel nanosheets-assembled Bi 12.5 P 0.5 O 20 microcubes: Facile hydrothermal synthesis, optical and catalytic performances

Abstract

Fabrication of assembly structure composed of building blocks is one of the important challenges in material chemistry field, because such unique nanoarchitectures help us to a better comprehension of the “bottom-up” route and afford a platform to explore and discover some new and interesting performances of micro/nanomaterials. Herein, we for the first time present a facile hydrothermal synthesis route for the fabrication of novel nanosheets-assembled Bi12.5P0.5O20 microcubes with the edge-length in 1–2 µm. The thickness of the sheet-like building block was calculated to be ∼23 nm. Some factors (reaction temperature, time, the presence of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose and the amount of NaOH) influencing the morphology and phase of the product were also investigated. UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectrum of the product revealed that the bandgap of the Bi12.5P0.5O20 sample was 2.71 eV. Furthermore, catalytic experiments demonstrated that the Bi12.5P0.5O20 microcubes exhibited excellent catalytic ability for the transformation of 4-nitrophenol in the existence of excess NaBH4 solution.