Highly efficient BiVO4 single-crystal nanosheets with dual modification: phosphorus doping and selective Ag modification

TL;DR

This study develops highly efficient BiVO4 nanosheets through dual modification with phosphorus doping and selective silver deposition, significantly enhancing photocatalytic performance for environmental cleanup.

Contribution

It introduces a combined doping and facet-selective modification strategy to improve BiVO4 photocatalysts' efficiency beyond single-component approaches.

Findings

Photocatalytic rate constant increased by 2.78 times.

P-doping created oxygen vacancies and increased charge carriers.

Ag modification improved electron-hole separation.

Abstract

BiVO4, a visible-light response photocatalyst, has shown tremendous potential because of abundant raw material sources, good stability and low cost. There exist some limitations for further applicaitions due to poor capability to separate electron-hole pairs. In fact, a single-component modification strategy is barely adequate to obtain highy efficient photocatalytic performance. In this work, P substituted some of the V atoms from VO4 oxoanions, namely P was doped into the V sites in the host lattice of BiVO4 by a hydrothermal route. Meanwhile, Ag as an attractive and efficient electron-cocatalyst was selectively modified on the (010) facet of BiVO4 nanosheets via facile photo-deposition. As a result, the obtained dually modified BiVO4 sheets exhibited enhanced photocatalytic degradation property of methylene blue (MB). In detail, photocatalytic rate constant (k) was 2.285 min-1g-1, which was 2.78 times higher than pristine BiVO4 nanosheets. Actually, P-doping favored the formation of O vacancies, led to more charge carriers, and facilitated photocatalytic reaction. On the other hand, metallic Ag loaded on (010) facet effectively transferred photogenerated electrons, which consequently helped electron-hole pairs separation. The present work may enlighten new thoughts for smart design and controllable synthesis of highly efficient photocatalytic materials.