Improved photocatalytic performance of a new silver doped BiSbO4 photocatalyst

Transition metal oxides are essential in environmental remediation applications due to their excellent ability to generate charge carriers, i.e. electrons and holes. Bimetallic oxide BiSbO4 (bismuth antimonate) possesses unique structure, vigorous oxidation ability and good chemical stability to be used as photocatalyst for the degradation of environmental pollutants. In this report, BiSbO4 and Ag–BiSbO4 (silver doped bismuth antimonate) have successfully synthesized via a simple ultrasonication method. The techniques used for the confirmation of structure, morphology, and vibrational modes for the synthesized material were X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. XRD showed that the prepared photocatalyst has a monoclinic structure. At the same time, SEM images presented the flake-like morphology of the as-prepared samples. For the photocatalytic study of prepared samples, methylene blue (MB) was used as a model dye to know the photocatalyst activity. The degradation efficiency of both doped and undoped bismuth antimonate was evaluated and compared. The obtained results showed that the Ag–BiSbO4 exhibited better efficiency than undoped BiSbO4. The methylene blue was degraded up to 85% in the presence of Ag–BiSbO4, while the BiSbO4 showed 70% degradation of methylene blue.