The application of BiOCl in photocatalysis has been restricted by its low utilization of solar energy and fast recombination of charge carriers. In this study, zero-dimensional (0D) Bi2WO6 nanoparticles/two-dimensional (2D) layered BiOCl heterojunction composite was successfully constructed by facile hydrothermal and solvothermal methods. The most favorable sunlight photocatalytic activity was achieved for the as-prepared Bi2WO6–BiOCl composites with a ratio of 1%. The photocatalytic rate and mineralization efficiency of one typical antibiotic (i.e., oxytetracycline) over 1% Bi2WO6–BiOCl was about 2.7 and 5.3 times as high as that of BiOCl. Both experimental characterizations and density functional theory (DFT) calculations confirmed that the excellent photocatalytic performance mainly arised from the effective charge separation along the Bi2WO6 and BiOCl heterojunction interface. The effective electron transfer was driven by the internal electric field at the interfacial junction. In addition, 1% Bi2WO6–BiOCl exhibited excellent stability, and no apparent deactivation was observed after 4 test cycles. Therefore, the 0D/2D Bi2WO6–BiOCl heterojunction showed a great potential for the photocatalytic degradation of emerging organic pollutants.
Lead-free halide perovskites have great potential as stable and nontoxic optoelectronic materials. As a promising photovoltaic candidate, AgBiI4 has attracted attention due to the eco-friendly property and strong stability, but...
The moiré-pattern with slightly interlayer-twisted bilayer two-dimensional (2D) materials has recently been receiving substantial attention. One of the major characters for these intriguing structures is the appearance of low-energy ultra-flat bands and thus a package of new physics associated with strong electron correlation emerges. However, such new physics may become vague unless the twist-angle θ is sufficiently small such as θ ∼ 1°, making practical applications and control-flexibility hard to handle. In this work, we explore the possible flat-band moiré physics in recently concerned 2D bilayer α-In2Se3 which is antiferroelectric with sublayer out-of-plane (OP) polarizations, addressing the potential role of polarization-bound charges in modulation of electron–electron correlation and interlayer hybridization, based on the extensive first-principles calculations. On one hand, it is found that the low energy band becomes extremely flat in the bilayer α-In2Se3 moiré-pattern with relatively large twist-angle, e.g. θ = 13.17°, which is more easily accessible experimentally. On the other hand, the impact of the sublayer OP polarizations on the band structure is asymmetric, and the flattening effect is much more remarkable for the end-to-end polarization alignment but weaker for the head-to-head alignment. This work thus opens a broad roadmap for technological access to artificial fabrication of novel moiré-patterned 2D materials by means of low-dimensional ferroelectricity.
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