Light-Induced Generation and Regeneration of Oxygen Vacancies in BiSbO4 for Sustainable Visible Light Photocatalysis

Maoxi Ran; Hong Wang; Wen Cui; Jieyuan Li; Peng Chen; Yanjuan Sun; Jianping Sheng; Ying Zhou; Yuxin Zhang; Fan Dong

doi:10.1021/acsami.9b18154

Light-Induced Generation and Regeneration of Oxygen Vacancies in BiSbO₄ for Sustainable Visible Light Photocatalysis

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Dec 26;11(51):47984-47991. doi: 10.1021/acsami.9b18154. Epub 2019 Dec 13.

Authors

Maoxi Ran^{1

2}, Hong Wang², Wen Cui^{2

3}, Jieyuan Li¹, Peng Chen^{2

3}, Yanjuan Sun^{1

2}, Jianping Sheng², Ying Zhou³, Yuxin Zhang⁴, Fan Dong^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Chongqing Key Laboratory of Catalysis and New Environmental Materials, College of Environment and Resources , Chongqing Technology and Business University , Chongqing 400067 , China.
² Research Center for Environmental Science & Technology, Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences , University of Electronic Science and Technology of China , Chengdu 611731 , China.
³ The Center of New Energy Materials and Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering , Southwest Petroleum University , Chengdu 610500 , China.
⁴ College of Materials Science and Engineering , Chongqing University , Chongqing 400044 , China.

PMID: 31802653
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b18154

Abstract

Oxygen vacancy (OV)-containing semiconductor photocatalysts have been extensively studied and applied in environmental and energy fields, but there are a few studies concerning the mechanisms of inactivation and regeneration of OVs to prevent the catalysts from deactivation. In this paper, we put forward a novel in situ method to introduce the OVs into BiSbO₄ (BiSbO₄-OV) via UV-light-induced breaking down of Bi-O and Sb-O bonds. The formation of OVs could broaden the photoresponse range and improve the charge carrier separation as confirmed by density functional theory calculation and UV and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The unique electronic structure of OVs endowed BiSbO₄ with high visible light photocatalytic NO activity. It was significant to reveal that oxygen in the air could fill the OV sites during the photocatalytic reaction and the consumption of the OVs led to the direct deactivation of BiSbO₄-OV. By re-irradiation of the deactivated photocatalysts, BiSbO₄-OV could get back to its initial state, realizing the refreshment of OVs for sustainable photocatalysis. Additionally, the visible light photocatalytic NO conversion pathway on BiSbO₄-OV was uncovered via in situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy based on the identification of the reaction intermediates and products. The light-induced generation and regeneration of OVs could also be extended to other semiconductors for sustainable visible light photocatalysis.

Keywords: DFT calculation; in situ DRIFTS; photo-induced oxygen vacancy; regeneration; visible light photocatalysis.