Abstract
2D nanomaterials, with unique structural and electronic features, had been demonstrated as excellent photocatalysts, whose catalytic properties could be tunable with surface defect engineering. In this work, few-layer BiOBr nanosheets with oxygen vacancies (BiOBr-Ov) have been fabricated by a simple solvothermal reaction with the help of ethylene glycol. The obtained BiOBr-Ov exhibited the superior photocatalytic performance with a complete reduction of Cr(VI) (20 mg/L) within 12 min by visible light irradiation. Moreover, Cr(VI) with a high concentration (such as 30 mg/L) only requires 2 min to be photoreduced completely under solar light irradiation. The enhanced photocatalytic performance is contributed to the existence of oxygen vacancies. It has been proved by the results of electrochemical impedance and photocurrent that oxygen vacancies can effectively suppress recombination of photogenerated carriers.
Highlights
Photocatalysis is able to directly convert solar light into chemical energy, being identified as a promising technology to solve environmental problems and the energy issues [1,2,3,4,5]
Wang et al demonstrated that excitons could be effectively dissociated into charge carriers with the incorporation of oxygen vacancy, leading to excellent performances in superoxide generation and selective organic syntheses under visible-light illumination [13]
The enhancement on the photocatalytic activity could be attributed to the presence of oxygen vacancies, which can narrow band gap, effectively trap photoelectrons at the oxygen vacancy sites, and suppress the photogenerated electron-hole recombination
Summary
Photocatalysis is able to directly convert solar light into chemical energy, being identified as a promising technology to solve environmental problems and the energy issues [1,2,3,4,5]. BiOX(X = Cl, Br, I) photocatalysts have been the comprehensive application in the degradation of organic dyes and pollutants, and recently, it is proved that BiOX photocatalysts display great potential to the photoreduction of Cr(VI) ions [44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52]. These obtained BiOX materials have poor ability to photoreduce Cr(VI) ions. The enhancement on the photocatalytic activity could be attributed to the presence of oxygen vacancies, which can narrow band gap, effectively trap photoelectrons at the oxygen vacancy sites, and suppress the photogenerated electron-hole recombination
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