Abstract
Photocatalytic materials development is very important in the environmental perspective. They can be employed in clean energy production by hydrogen generation as well as in wastewater treatment by photocatalysis. One of the key subjects in this area is the advancement of materials with low band gap, thus the catalyst can use the sunlight more efficiently. Based on this issue, this research aims to develop photocatalysts based on bismuth, niobium and iron (Bi2FexNbO7), analyze the influence of iron concentration (x = 0, 0.8, 1 and 1.2) and characterize through optical and structural analysis. The powder samples were synthetized by sol gel method. Band gap estimation was performed throw UV-Vis analysis and Kubelka-Munk method. XRD technique was employed to phase determination and structural characterization. The catalyst with no iron (Bi2NbO7) presented a mix of three phases from reagents and a band gap of 3.14 eV. The iron addition promotes crystalline photocatalysts with high visible light absorption ability and hence lower band gap, 2.09 eV. Further analysis must be performed; however, based on structural and optical proprieties, these materials can efficiently be employed both in wastewater treatment and hydrogen production.
Highlights
The scientific community has shown a crescent interest in photocatalytic materials for environmental applications, since the use of these materials might lead to the development of sustainable technologies that allow cleaning the environment in a safe and effective way
Photocatalysts are semiconductors materials, which contain an electronic band gap (Eg), which represents the energy edge between the conduction and valence band. When these materials are irradiated by a photon with similar or higher energy than the band gap, an electron is promoted to conduction band and an electron hole is generated at valence band
In order to develop and characterize photocatalysts based on bismuth, niobium and iron (Bi2FeNbO7) for environmental applications, powders were synthesized by sol-gel method
Summary
The scientific community has shown a crescent interest in photocatalytic materials for environmental applications, since the use of these materials might lead to the development of sustainable technologies that allow cleaning the environment in a safe and effective way. Photocatalysts are semiconductors materials, which contain an electronic band gap (Eg), which represents the energy edge between the conduction and valence band. When these materials are irradiated by a photon with similar or higher energy than the band gap, an electron is promoted to conduction band and an electron hole is generated at valence band. These electronic beings are known as electron-hole pair [2]. There are two main environmental applications for the electron-hole pair: water splitting and photocatalysis
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