Synthesis of silver phosphate/sillenite bismuth ferrite/graphene oxide nanocomposite and its enhanced visible light photocatalytic mechanism

Abstract

In the present work, silver phosphate/sillenite bismuth ferrite/graphene oxide (Ag3PO4/Bi25FeO40/GO) nanocomposite has been successfully fabricated via hydrothermal strategy and ultrasound precipitation treatment. Afterwards, physicochemical properties of as-obtained composite were studied through X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV–vis DRS), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface areas, vibrating sample magnetometer(VSM) measurements. Meanwhile, Linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), Mott-Schottky (M-S), Transient photocurrent-curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements were measured to investigate the photoelectrochemical properties. Besides, the degradation efficiency of Rhodamine B was as the evaluation of PC efficiency, which could reach 96.9% after 75 min illumination. The results indicated that spherical Ag3PO4 and Bi25FeO40 crystallographic particles were integrated with GO and the enhanced PC performance can be attributed to significantly visible light absorbance and charge separation efficiency. Furthermore, to distinguish the contribution of reactive species including O2−, OH, H2O2, h+ and e−, several scavenger experiments have been conducted. Noticeable, the Ag3PO4/Bi25FeO40/GO nanocomposite has magnetic because of the integration with Bi25FeO40. Eventually, the possible photocatalytic performance mechanism of Ag3PO4/Bi25FeO40/GO was proposed.