One-pot construction of Ta-doped BiOCl/Bi heterostructures toward simultaneously promoting visible light harvesting and charge separation for highly enhanced photocatalytic activity

Simultaneously integrating heterogeneous interface and element doping into BiOCl crystals is a promising strategy to promote the visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity. Here we demonstrated a facile solvothermal route for one-pot coupling Bi nanodots with Ta-doped BiOCl nanosheets (denoted as Ta-BiOCl/Bi). This Ta-BiOCl/Bi sample presented a remarkable catalytic performance toward the visible-light-driven degradation of Rhodamine B and tetracycline solution than those of the Ta-BiOCl, BiOCl/Bi and BiOCl photocatalysts. The enhanced photocatalytic mechanism can be proposed as follows. Both Ta dopant level in energy band structure of BiOCl and LSPR effect of Bi species were beneficial to increasing the visible light absorption, and the formation of heterogeneous interface between Ta-BiOCl and Bi was responsibility for accelerating the separation of charge carriers. This work might arouse in-depth investigations on the development of novel one-pot strategy for the synthesis of high-active BiOX (X = Cl, Br and I)-based photocatalysts.