Controlled synthesis of bismuth oxyiodide toward optimization of photocatalytic performance

Abstract A new investigation on the variation rule of the structure, morphology, chemical composition and photocatalytic performance of bismuth oxyiodide synthesized by solvothermal method as a function of reaction conditions was performed here. The composition and morphology of the product could be determined by X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis and scanning electron microscopy. The results revealed that the particle size together with content of iodide in bismuth oxyiodide decrease with the increase of the concentration of reaction precursors. Hollow Bi 4 O 5 I 2 microsphere with specific surface area as high as 120.88 m 2  g −1 can be easily synthesized when the concentration of the reaction precursors finally increased to 62.5 mM. Photocatalytic water purification performance of the as-prepared samples was evaluated by using Rhodamine B (RhB) as a model contaminant. The results revealed that the hollow Bi 4 O 5 I 2 exhibited the best performance among all the bismuth oxyodide synthesized here for the degradation of RhB under visible light irradiation. Meanwhile, the formation mechanism of the hierarchical hollow structure of bismuth oxyiodide was investigated by the dissolution-recrystallization mechanism.