Hydrothermal synthesis of InVO4/Graphitic carbon nitride heterojunctions and excellent visible-light-driven photocatalytic performance for rhodamine B

In this work, n-type graphite-like C3N4 (denoted as g-C3N4) was fabricated and modified with p-type Indium vanadate (InVO4) to form a novel InVO4/g-C3N4 p-n heterojunction photocatalyst for the efficient photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B (Rh B). The photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), photoluminescence (PL) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The photocatalytic activities were evaluated in the degradation of Rh B aqueous solution. The results showed that the as-prepared InVO4/g-C3N4 hybrid materials displayed much higher photocatalytic activity than the pure g-C3N4 and InVO4 particles. Among them, the 30 wt% InVO4/g-C3N4 sample exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity. The visible-light photocatalytic activity enhancement of InVO4/g-C3N4 heterojunction photocatalyst could be attributed to its strong absorption in the visible region and low recombination rate of the electron-hole pairs. It was further found that the photodegradation of Rh B molecules is mainly attributed to the oxidation action of the generated O-2(is approximately equal to) radicals and partly to the oxidation process of (OH)-O-center dot radicals. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.