Enhancement in the photocatalytic antifouling efficiency over cherimoya-like InVO4/BiVO4 with a new vanadium source

Abstract The problem of marine life attachment and its pollution to facilities has caused a lot of great troubles in the development and application of marine resources. The holes generated by the photocatalytic coating materials under sunlight may produce strong oxidizing species and showed a significant effect on the degradation and bactericidal performance of environmental organic matter. In this paper, a novel bismuth vanadate/indium vanadate (BiVO4/InVO4) composite with cherimoya-like microstructure was fabricated using new vanadium source. It is found that the composite materials showed enhanced photocatalytic antifouling property. The degradation efficiency of the model pollutes (Rhodamine B, RhB) achieved 99.775% within 280 min over BiVO4/InVO4 nanostructures, and the sterilization rate of E. coli, S. aureus, P. aeruginosa and A. carterae achieved 99.7148%, 99.5519%, 99.5411% and 96.00%, respectively. Moreover, the circulate photocatalytic degradation of antibacteria experiments demonstrated the outstanding stability and reusability of BiVO4/InVO4 composite. According to the active free radical trapping experiments, the hydroxyl radical ( OH) and superoxide radical ( O2−) were certified to be the main reactive oxygen species in the BiVO4/InVO4 system. The distinctly enhanced photocatalytic performance of BiVO4/InVO4 nanomaterial primarily resulted from the narrow bandgap (about 1.86 eV). This study not only provides a new method for developing novel antibacterial materials, but also introduces a visible light-driven photocatalyst for water treatment and marine antifouling, especially for red tide control.