%0 Journal Article
%T Regulating Electron-Hole Separation to Promote the Photocatalytic Property of BiOBr<sub>1−x</sub>I<sub>x</sub>/BiOBr Local Distorted Hierarchical Microspheres
%A Rui Cheng
%A Yan Zhang
%A Yanhua Peng
%A Xiaolong Yang
%A Jianqiang Yu
%A Zhaoguang Nie
%J Modern Research in Catalysis
%P 36-55
%@ 2168-4499
%D 2021
%I Scientific Research Publishing
%R 10.4236/mrc.2021.102003
%X In this work, hierarchical BiOBr<sub>1−x</sub>I<sub>x</sub>/BiOBr heterojunction photocatalyst with a microsphere morphology was synthesized by a facile solvothermal process. It demonstrated that the local structure of the photocatalysts was highly distorted due to the substitution of bromide ions by iodine ions. The photocatalytic properties were evaluated by the photodecomposition of aqueous phenol solution under visible-light irradiation. The results indicated that all the composite photocatalysts exhibited high photocatalytic activity. In particularly, the BiOBr<sub>1−x</sub>I<sub>x</sub>/BiOBr (x = 0.25) sample exhibited over 92% degradation efficiency of phenol within 150 min, which is 24.6 and 3.08 fold enhancement in the photocatalytic activity over the pure phased BiOBr and BiOI, respectively. Moreover, this excellent photocatalytic property can be expanded to other colorless organic contaminants, verifying the common applicability of BiOBr<sub>1−x</sub>I<sub>x</sub>/BiOBr (x = 0.25) as an excellent visible-light photocatalyst for organics decomposition. The significant improvement in the photocatalytic activity can be explained by the high efficiency of charge separation due to the enhancement in the internal electric fields and band match that comes from the local structure distortion. This work provides valuable information for the design of highly active photocatalysts toward the environmental remediation.
%K BiOBr
%K Iodine Ions Doping
%K Enhanced Photocatalytic Property
%K Phenol Decomposition
%K Local Structure Distortion
%U http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=108375