Enhanced photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants over basic bismuth (III) nitrate/BiVO4 composite.

Basic bismuth (III) nitrate (BBN)/BiVO(4) composites were prepared by a coprecipitation method. A variety of techniques including X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), N(2) adsorption, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were employed to characterize the resulting materials. The composite shows higher photocatalytic activity than BiVO(4) over degradation of organic pollutants (RhB, MO, phenol, and 2-propanol). A mechanism was proposed for the enhanced photocatalytic activity. The proposed mechanism was confirmed by experiments with hydroxyl radicals. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.