An advanced oxidized bacterial cellulose platform for improving the photocatalysis performance of BiOCl

Herein, we present a high-performance flower-like BiOCl-oxidized bacterial cellulose (BiOCl-OBC) nanocomposites were designed and developed employing sustainable bacterial cellulose (BC) as regulator through a simple hydrothermal synthesis method. OBC has abundant hydroxide ions, and Bi3+ is entangled and dispersed in OBC solution, which promotes the in-situ growth of BiOCl nanosheets on OBC fiber network, forming BiOCL-OBC composite materials similar to flowers and changing their surface properties. Due to the negatively charged of BiOCl-OBC composites, the Rhodamine B (RhB) cationic dye was easily to adsorbed to its surface, which facilitates the occurrence of photosensitization and photocatalysis in the reaction. BiOCl-OBC composites exhibited high photocatalytic degradation performance for RhB under multi-mode illumination conditions; the cycle test results show that the BiOCl-OBC composite has good stability and recyclability. Finally, the photocatalytic degradation mechanism of BiOCl-OBC composites was discussed. Therefore, the OBC is expected to be used as a modifier for the surface modification to improve the photocatalytic performance of BiOCl and the BiOCl-OBC nanocomposite is a novel promising candidate as adsorbent photocatalysts with visible illumination reaction.