Construction of BiOCl/In2O3 heterojunction for effective photocatalytic reduction of CO2

In this work, the BiOCl/In2O3 catalyst for the photocatalytic reduction of CO2 was successfully prepared by the hydrothermal method and the type II heterojunction was successfully constructed. The photocatalytic activity of the complex catalyst for the photocatalytic reduction of CO2 was investigated. The results show that the photocatalytic yield of the BiOCl/In2O3 composite to CO is 6.9 µmolg−1h−1, which is 3.6 and 35 times that of BiOCl nanosheets and In2O3, respectively. The BiOCl/In2O3 composite photocatalyst has better visible light absorption and better charge separation efficiency. The significant improvement in the photocatalytic performance can be attributed to the improvement in the visible light absorption range and the reduced band gap, which can increase the production of photogenerated electrons and thus facilitate the reaction of CO2 reduction to CO.