Microwave-assisted preparation and enhanced photocatalytic activity of Bi2WO6/BiOI heterojunction for organic pollutants degradation under visible-light irradiation

In this research, we adopted morphology control and constructing p-n heterojunction to boost the photocatalytic performance of BiOI. BiOI with three morphologies (nanoplate, micro-flower, microsphere) was fabricated via a wet-chemical method at room temperature using different solvents. And Bi2WO6/BiOI microspheres were successfully prepared by a microwave-assisted synthetic method. The as-synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) and High-resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM). The results of photo-degradation experiment demonstrated that BiOI-3 and BWOI-3 show high photocatalytic performance towards methyl orange (MO) and bisphenol A (BPA) degradation due to the high specific surface area, synergistic effect between p-type BiOI and n-type Bi2WO6 and high separation efficiency of electron-hole pairs, which is verified by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Photocurrent (PC) and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) analysis. Moreover, the repeated photocatalytic experiment was carried out by using MO as the representative organic pollutant, manifesting the good durability of the sample.