Abstract
In this research work, we reported the synthesis of a spherical-shaped bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) photocatalyst using a cost-effective, simple, chemical hydrothermal method and studied the effect of deposition temperatures on the structural, morphological, optical properties, etc. The XRD result confirmed the monoclinic scheelite phase of BiVO4. An XPS study confirmed the occurrence of Bi, V, and O elements and also found that Bi and V exist in +3 and +5 oxidation states, respectively. SEM micrographs revealed the spherical-shaped morphology of the BiVO4 photocatalyst. Optical investigation showed that the bandgap of the BiVO4 photocatalyst varied between 2.25 and 2.32 eV. The as-synthesized BiVO4 photocatalyst was used to study the photocatalytic degradation of crystal violet (CV) dye under visible light illumination. The photocatalytic degradation experiment showed that the degradation percentage of crystal violet dye using BiVO4 reached 98.21% after 120 min. Mineralization of crystal violet dye was studied using a chemical oxygen demand analysis.
Highlights
The semiconductor-assisted photocatalysis process has proven to be effective for the decomposition of organic pollutants, such as acids, dyes, and aromatic and phenolic compounds, etc., which are present in wastewater, due to its strong redox potential, environmental friendliness, moderate operation temperature, easy operation, and useful final products [1,2]
We studied the effect of different deposition temperatures on the structural, morphological, optical, and photocatalytic properties of the BiVO4 photocatalyst
For all of the synthesized photocatalysts, the diffraction peaks were well indexed to the monoclinic scheelite phase of BiVO4 (JCPDS Card number 01-083-1699) [18]
Summary
The semiconductor-assisted photocatalysis process has proven to be effective for the decomposition of organic pollutants, such as acids, dyes, and aromatic and phenolic compounds, etc., which are present in wastewater, due to its strong redox potential, environmental friendliness, moderate operation temperature, easy operation, and useful final products [1,2]. Among the different visible light-responsive photocatalysts, BiVO4 is one of the better, n-type visible light-driven photocatalysts, which has received much attention due to its narrow bandgap, non-toxicity, favorable valence band position, and high stability during the photocatalytic reaction [3,4,5] It has been used in different applications such as supercapacitors, gas sensors, batteries, hydrogen production, photocatalysis, etc. Crystal violet (CV) dye is used in many industries such as the textile, paper, agriculture, and leather industries It was chosen as the model organic impurity in order to evaluate the photocatalytic performance of the spherical-shaped BiVO4 photocatalyst under visible light illumination. We obtained good degradation efficiency compared to the literature (Table 1)
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