Synthesis of a Highly Efficient BiOCl Single-Crystal Nanodisk Photocatalyst with Exposing {001} Facets

Abstract

BiOCl is known as a highly efficient photocatalyst for degradation of pollutants. However, effective methods for fabricating BiOCl nanomaterials with well-defined facets are still lacking. In this work, a facile synthetic method was developed for the fabrication of BiOCl nanodisks with exposed {001} facets. The central feature of this approach was the use of water as the hydrolysis agent and ethylene glycol as the crystal growth inhibitor agent to tune the growth of BiOCl nanomaterial. With this approach, the size and shape of BiOCl nanostructures could be effectively tuned through adjusting the volume ratio of ethylene glycol/H2O. In addition, the mechanism of the crystal growth in this fabrication process was elucidated. The as-prepared BiOCl nanodisks with exposed {001} facets exhibited an excellent photocatalytic activity towards Rhodamine B degradation under both ultraviolet and visible light irradiations. These findings shed light on the deep understanding of formation mechanisms of BiOCl nanodisks and provide an efficient and facile method for the synthesis of high active photocatalyst.

Hierarchical BiOCl microflowers with improved visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity by Fe(III) modification

“…5b), sharp peaks at 529.9 eV can be seen, which come from the Bi O bond in BiOCl. On the other hand, the Cl2p XPS spectra consist of welldefined Cl 2p 3/2 and Cl 2p 1/2 photolines that are located at 198.1 and 199.6 eV, respectively, consistent with the values for Cl − in BiOCl reported in the literature [10]. Particularly, after Fe(III) clusters modification, no critical shifts of the peak positions are observed, indicating that the Fe(III) clusters were just fixed on the surfaces instead of doped into the lattices of BiOCl.…”

“…5a gives the Bi 4f core-level spectra of the samples. Two intensive peaks at 164.68 and 159.38 eV are observed, which can be assigned to the Bi 4f 5/2 and Bi 4f 7/2 spin-orbital components of Bi 3+ in BiOCl [10]. No photoelectron signals associated with Bi 2+ , Bi 4+ or Bi 5+ states in bismuth oxides appeared, suggesting the high purity of the samples.…”

“…Bismuth oxychloride (BiOCl) is one of the promising photocatalysts, featured with the tetragonal layered structures of [Bi 2 O 2 ] slabs interleaved with double Cl slabs, endowed with an efficient separation of photoinduced charges [3,4]. Thus, considerable efforts have been devoted to prepare BiOCl nanostructures with a diversity of well-defined morphologies, such as nanosheets [4][5][6], nanoplates [7][8][9], and nanodisks [10], and nanoflakes [11]. Moreover, these nanostructures can act as the building blocks to self-assemble into three dimensional (3D) hierarchical structures with superior photocatalytic performance.…”

Layer-controlled growth of MoS2 on self-assembled flower-like Bi2S3 for enhanced photocatalysis under visible light irradiation

“…After 240 min of irradiation, the highest removal efficiency of 89% was obtained by the 3D MoS 2 /Bi 2 S 3 (MoBi-30; Figure 5b), that is, higher than the results of some typical visible photocatalysts (Supplementary Figure S14). [42][43][44] The 3D MoS 2 /Bi 2 S 3 (MoBi-30) exhibited not only the largest adsorption capacity, but also the highest catalytic activity for atrazine degradation under visible light irradiation. Apparently, its high catalytic activity should be attributed to the strong synergistic effects between the good interfacial mass transfer and the rapid surface chemical reaction.…”

The {0 0 1} facets-dependent superior photocatalytic activities of BiOCl nanosheets under visible light irradiation

“…Yu's group proposed a new facile method to synthesize high-purity 2D BiOCl nanodisks with exposed {0 0 1} facets. The photocatalytic activity results indicated that RhB can be completely photodegraded within 120 min [11]. Zan et al synthesized 3D BiOCl flowers through a solution oxidation process, and the RhB was completely degraded within 80 min [12].…”