Facile Synthesis of BiOI Nanoparticles at Room Temperature and Evaluation of their Photoactivity Under Sunlight Irradiation.

In this study, highly photoactive BiOI nanoparticles (NPs) under sunlight irradiation were synthesized by a facile precipitation method using polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) at room temperature. The as-prepared catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transition electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (UV-vis DRS). The results of XRD showed that PVP did not have any significant effect on tetragonal crystalline structure of BiOI. Also, using different amounts of PVP in the synthesis led to different morphologies and sizes of BiOI particles. It was found that using 0.2 g of PVP in the synthesis method changed morphology from 1-μm platelets to NPs with size under 10 nm. In addition, the photocatalytic performance of prepared photocatalysts was evaluated in the photodegradation of reactive blue 19 (RB19) dye under sunlight irradiation. The BiOI synthesized using 0.2 g PVP (BiOI0.2) showed higher degradation efficiency compared to BiOI prepared without any additive. Excellent visible light photocatalytic properties of nano-scaled BiOI0.2 samples compared to BiOI platelets could be attributed to higher surface-to-volume ratio and narrow band-gap energy of as-prepared BiOI0.2 NPs.