Synthesis of BiOI(BiO) sub(2)CO sub(3) facet coupling heterostructures toward efficient visible-light photocatalytic properties

In this paper, BiOI(BiO) sub(2)CO sub(3) facet coupling heterostructures were synthesized viaexfoliation and ion exchange, and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), photoluminescence (PL) spectra and valence-band XPS spectra. With the reaction time increasing, more BiOI can be transformed to (BiO) sub(2)CO sub(3), and BiOI(BiO) sub(2)CO sub(3) facet coupling heterostructures were obtained. The photocatalytic results showed that BiOI(BiO) sub(2)CO sub(3) displays much higher photocatalytic activity than BiOI and (BiO) sub(2)CO sub(3) under visible-light. The photocatalytic mechanism study revealed that BiOI(BiO) sub(2)CO sub(3) has strong adsorption for RhB molecules due to the ultrathin nanosheets and higher BET, and displays better separation efficiency of photoinduced charge carriers and higher photocurrent due to the {001}/{001} facet coupling.