One-pot synthesis of bismuth silicate heterostructures with tunable morphology and excellent visible light photodegradation performances

Kun-Le Jia; Jin Qu; Shu-Meng Hao; Fei An; Ya-Qiong Jing; Zhong-Zhen Yu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.040

One-pot synthesis of bismuth silicate heterostructures with tunable morphology and excellent visible light photodegradation performances

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2017 Nov 15:506:255-262. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.040. Epub 2017 Jul 15.

Authors

Kun-Le Jia¹, Jin Qu², Shu-Meng Hao¹, Fei An¹, Ya-Qiong Jing¹, Zhong-Zhen Yu³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China. Electronic address: qujin@mail.buct.edu.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Organic-Inorganic Composites, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China; Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China. Electronic address: yuzz@mail.buct.edu.cn.

PMID: 28735199
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.07.040

Abstract

Construction of a heterostructure to prolong the life of electron-hole pairs is a very important approach to endow it with excellent photodegradation performances. Particularly, one-pot synthesis of heterostructures with the same component but different crystal structures to form a proper band gap is still challenging. Herein, bismuth silicate (BSO) heterostructures are synthesized using a one-pot hydrothermal approach without adding any other inorganic components. The crystal phase, morphology, surface state, and photochemical properties of the BSO materials are precisely tuned to fabricate two kinds of bismuth silicate heterostructures: rod-like Bi₂SiO₅/Bi₁₂SiO₂₀ and flower-like Bi₂SiO₅/Bi₄Si₃O₁₂ heterostructures. Thanks to the two heterostructures and clean surface, the optimized BSO material exhibits a highly active photocatalytic performance with a remarkable cycling stability. It photodegrades Rhodamine B under visible light irradiation as fast as 15min with the reaction rate constants k and k_s to be 0.399min^-1 and 0.698min^-1Lm^-2, respectively, which is up to 189 times faster than reported.

Keywords: Bismuth silicate; Heterostructures; Photocatalytic performance; Visible light photodegradation.