Performance studies of bismuth-based photocatalysts: Adsorption energy, oxygen vacancies

Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical present in many hard plastics and widely applied in human daily life, is linked by experts to higher doses of BPA causing side effects on health. To this end, cactus-like BiO2-x/Bi2MoO6 composites were constructed by a solvothermal method and utilized as a photocatalyst to degrade BPA under simulated sunlight irradiation. It manifested that the increased oxygen vacancies and the optimized electron structure are the key factors responsible for the enhanced photodegradation ability of BiO2-x/Bi2MoO6 when compared with the pure Bi-based samples. The mechanism analysis suggested that the ·O2–, h+ and ·OH are the main active species involved in the reaction, and ·O2– plays a key role in the degradation of BPA. In addition, DFT computation manifests that the improved photodegradation performance of the constructed BiO2-x/Bi2MoO6 is also related to the enhanced adsorption ability of BPA over BiO2-x/Bi2MoO6. Moreover, a hypothetical reaction pathway was proposed based the analysis of GC–MS.