Fabrication of high surface area AgI incorporated porous BiVCO4 heterojunction photocatalysts

The low surface area and photogenerated charge carrier recombination rate severely affects the usability of a photocatalysts. In this work, a visible light active AgI/BiVO4 photocatalyst was fabricated via a low temperature one step hydrothermal method. Low temperature preparation results in a porous and very high surface area (114 m(2)/g) BiVO4 photocatalysts. XRD, FTIR, Raman and BET surface area analysis revealed that Agl is bonded as well as embedded in the porous structure of BiVO4, which causes shrinking of the BiVO4 lattice. Compare to bare BiVO4, the AgI/BiVO4 photocatalyst shows nearly 1.7 times higher photocurrent response and 43% higher photocatalytic activity. The significantly high photocatalytic activity ascribed to the very high surface area, and the effective charge separation at the AgI/BiVO4 p-n heterojunction. Further, based on UV-DRS and Mott-Schottky measurements, a plausible charge transfer mechanism is proposed.