Construction of 2D/2D BiVO4/g-C3N4 nanosheet heterostructures with improved photocatalytic activity

In this work, a two dimensional (2D)/2D BiVO4/g-C3N4 heterostructure with strong interfacial interaction was successfully constructed. The as-prepared BiVO4/g-C3N4 heterostructures exhibit distinctly enhanced visible light photocatalytic performance toward the degradation of Rodanmin B (RhB) and water splitting to oxygen (O2) as compared to pristine g-C3N4 and BiVO4, which can be attributed to the strong interfacial interaction and abundant 2D coupling interfaces, facilitating efficient charge separation. Among the composites with various ratios, the BiVO4-10/g-C3N4 sample achieves the optimum photocatalytic activity for the degradation of RhB, and reached 15.8 and 4.3 times compared to pure g-C3N4 and BiVO4. Moreover, the corresponding composite reached a high O2-production rate of 0.97 μmol h−1 under visible light irradiation, which is 12.1 and 2.8 times higher than that of pure g-C3N4 and BiVO4, respectively. It was demonstrated that the efficiency of electron-hole separation has certain contribution to the photocatalytic performance over the BiVO4/g-C3N4 heterostructure. The present study suggests that the unique 2D/2D BiVO4/g-C3N4 hybrid nanosheets should be conducive to improve the photocatalytic performance of organic pollutant degradation and water splitting.