Abstract
Tetracycline cannot be effectively degraded in wastewater treatment. Therefore, the development of excellent photocatalysts is of significant importance for environmental protection. In this study, a β-Bi2O3/BiOCl heterojunction photocatalyst with hollow flower-like microspheres was successfully synthesized by the in-situ reaction of HCl and β-Bi2O3 hollow spheres. The prepared samples are characterized by Scanning electron microscopy, Transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, N2 physical adsorption, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, and Photoluminescence. Then, research on the photocatalytic performance for the degradation of tetracycline hydrochloride was conducted. The results show that the photocatalytic performance of the β-Bi2O3/BiOCl composite is significantly better than the β-Bi2O3 and BiOCl. The increase in photocatalytic activity is due to the formation of a heterojunction between β-Bi2O3 and BiOCl, which effectively promotes the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Additionally, the heterojunction nanocomposite demonstrated the outstanding photocatalytic stability after five cycles, which indicates that the material can be used for water environment purification. This paper provides assistance for studying the photocatalytic mechanism of heterojunction photocatalytic materials.
Highlights
In recent years, with the rapid development and application of new environmental analysis technologies, the focus of environmental workers on environmental pollution and human health has gradually extended from traditional typical pollutants to trace pollutants in the environment, such as antibiotics [1,2,3]
The SEM images of the β-Bi2O3/BiOCl heterojunction are shown in Figure 1b–e and show that BiOCl nanosheets are tightly covered on the β-Bi2O3 surface
Combined with the above discussion and similar reports, we conclude that BiOCl plays a major role in the β-Bi2O3/BiOCl heterojunction photocatalytic reaction, and the presence of β-Bi2O3 causes a heterojunction electric field to form at the interface between β-Bi2O3 and BiOCl
Summary
With the rapid development and application of new environmental analysis technologies, the focus of environmental workers on environmental pollution and human health has gradually extended from traditional typical pollutants to trace pollutants in the environment, such as antibiotics [1,2,3]. Compared with traditional photocatalyst TiO2, Bi2O3 has a narrow band gap (about 2.8 eV), a large number of oxygen vacancies, and a good optical conductivity. It has a higher utilization rate of sunlight and a stronger oxidation capacity [24,25,26]. In view of the low photocatalytic efficiency of monomers BiOCl and β-Bi2O3, the advantages of the two semiconductors can be comprehensively utilized when they are combined into heterogeneous structures. The tetracycline (TC) was used as the target degradant to test the photocatalytic degradation performance of the sample under visible light irradiation, and the effects of β-Bi2O3/BiOCl composites prepared by different molar ratios n (β-Bi2O3)/n (BiOCl) on the photocatalytic activity were investigated. We proposed a possible visible-light photodegradation mechanism of tetracycline (TC) over the β-Bi2O3/BiOCl heterojunction photocatalyst
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