Fabrication and characterization of BiOxBry/BiOmIn coupled GCN heterojunctions with enhanced visible-light catalytic activity

Abstract

We report the fabrication of bismuth oxybromide/bismuth oxyiodide coupled to graphitic carbon nitride heterojunctions via a simple hydrothermal method to circumvent fast recombination of photogenerated charge carriers of pure BiOX. The obtained BiOxBry/BiOmIn/GCN with varied ratios and synthetic conditions were stable and achieved significant enhancement in visible-light driven catalytic activities for degradation of crystal violet and 2-hydroxybenzoic acid. BB2I1–200–7-10%GCN heterojunction also showed selective reduction of carbon dioxide to methane under UV–vis irradiation with 0.018 μmol/g.h yield. The photocatalytic mechanism and major active species in crystal violet decomposition by BiOxBry/BiOmIn/GCN were investigated and proposed.

Keywords

• Bismuth oxybromide
• Bismuth oxyiodide
• g-C3N4
• Photocatalysis
• CO2 reduction
• Crystal violet