Article pubs.acs.org/IECR
Hydrothermal Synthesis of Novel Uniform Nanooctahedral Bi3(FeO4)(WO4)2 Solid Oxide and Visible-Light Photocatalytic Performance Yanan Wang, Shule Zhang,* Qin Zhong,* Yiqing Zeng, Man Ou, and Wei Cai School of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, People’s Republic of China S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: For the first time, novel single-phase octahedral Bi3(FeO4)(WO4)2 (BFW) nanocrystals, as a visible-lightinduced catalyst, had been successfully synthesized in a facile alkaline hydrothermal way without using any template. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images clearly show single crystals of BFW with regular octahedral morphology. The formation of the single-phase BFW compound was recorded using an X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. The optical property of BFW was investigated using ultraviolet− visible light (UV-vis) spectra. The band-gap energy of BFW was revealed to be 1.98 eV. More importantly, the interfacial interaction of W6+ ions substituted by Fe3+ ions was confirmed. Moreover, the present study pointed out the positions of the valence band and the conduction band. Compared with the Bi2WO6 (BW) sample, BFW exhibited superior photocatalytic degradation activity of the Rhodamine B (RhB) under visible-light irradiation. A trapping experiment was conducted to further illustrate that hydroxyl radicals (•OH) played a distinct role among active species during the photodegradation of RhB.
1. INTRODUCTION Various semiconductor-based photocatalysis methods have been considered as potential avenues to address water pollution problems, environment problems, and the global energy crisis with affluent solar light during the past few decades.1−3 However, the general photocatalysts such as ZnO and TiO2, because of their wide band gaps, can absorb only ultraviolet (UV) light, which is
