Facile solvothermal synthesis of monoclinic-tetragonal heterostructured BiVO4 for photodegradation of rhodamine B

We synthesized BiVO4 photocatalysts using a facile solvothermal router and three different mixed solvents, 2-methoxyethanol (MEOH), 1,2-ethanediol (EDOH), and 1,2,3-propanetriol (PTOH) with water, which we then characterized by XRD, XPS, FE-SEM, and UV-vis DRS. The XRD results show that we obtained single-phase monoclinic scheelite (m-s BiVO4) in the EDOH/water and PTOH/water -systems and .monoclinic/tetragonal heterostructure BiVO4 (m-t BiVO4) in the MEOH and water mixture. m-t BiVO4 with a monoclinic/tetragonal heterostructure prevents the recombination of photoexcited electron-hole pairs. As such, of the three samples, the m-t BiVO4 material showed the highest activity in the photodecomposition of rhodamine B.