Room Temperature Synthesis and Photocatalytic Activity of Magnetically Recoverable Fe3O4/BiOCl Nanocomposite Photocatalysts

Abstract

Magnetically recoverable Fe3O4/BiOCl nanocomposite photocatalysts were fabricated by a simple chemical coprecipitation method at room temperature. The amount of Fe3O4 incorporated into BiOCl was varied from 0 to 20 wt%. The as-synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, and vibrating sample magnetometer. The obtained results show that the as-synthesized samples mainly contain both crystalline phases (Fe3O4 and BiOCl) and are composed of flower-like nanostructures. Compared to UV light-responsive BiOCl, all the nanocomposite photocatalysts show a strong light absorbance in the range of 250–800 nm, demonstrating that the Fe3O4/BiOCl nanocomposites can respond to visible as well as UV light. Moreover, visible light absorbance was increased with the increase in the Fe3O4 amount in the composite. The photocatalytic activity of nanocomposite photocatalysts was evaluated by the photodegradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) over the samples under visible light irradiation. The 10 wt% Fe3O4/BiOCl nanocomposite photocatalyst shows the highest photocatalytic efficiency among the samples. The Fe3O4/BiOCl nanocomposite photocatalyst was stable under visible light irradiation to efficiently degrade RhB molecules after five cycles and could be easily recovered with a magnet after each cycle.