Mild oxide-hydrothermal synthesis of different aspect ratios of monoclinic BiVO4 nanorods tuned by temperature

The monoclinic scheelite BiVO4 nanocrystals were easily prepared via an oxide-hydrothermal synthesis (OHS) method directly utilizing bulk-phase materials of V2O5 and Bi2O3 as precursor. In the presence of PEG 4000, the reactions were performed in the mild temperature range from 130 degrees C to 200 degrees C. The products were characterized with FTIR, XRD, TEM and UV-vis DRS. These data clearly demonstrated that monoclinic scheelite structure BiVO4 could be synthesized by the feasible OHS route. The aspect ratios of nanorods were increased with the synthesized temperature. The as-prepared BiVO4 showed high photocatalytic activity, which was demonstrated by degradation of methylene blue (MB) solution under visible-light irradiation (lambda > 420 nm). A growth mechanism of bismuth vanadate was proposed. (C) 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim