Facile preparation of BiOCl/Ti3C2 hybrid photocatalyst with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity

In the present work, a novel BiOCl/Ti3C2 nanostructured composite was synthesized using a simple precipitation method. The morphology and structure of the nanocomposite were characterized while its photocatalytic properties were studied using methyl orange dye (MO) as the model pollutant under visible-light irradiation. The results indicated that the obtained BiOCl has flower-like nanostructured morphology, which is composed of nanosheets. After the introduction of Ti3C2, the petaloid-shaped BiOCl grew on the surface layers of Ti3C2. Additionally, the photocatalytic degradation tests of MO showed that the BiOCl/Ti3C2 nanocomposite had a much higher degradation efficiency compared to that of the pristine BiOCl. Herein, a possible photocatalytic mechanism for BiOCl/Ti3C2 nanocomposites was also proposed. The results suggest that the Ti3C2 addition can effectively promote the photoelectron separation from vacancies, which leads to photocatalytic activity enhancement of the BiOCl/Ti3C2 composite.