A facile preparation of immobilized BiOCl nanosheets/TiO2 arrays on FTO with enhanced photocatalytic activity and reusability

Forming a hybrid structure is considered as an efficient strategy toward improving the photocatalytic activity of TiO2-based photocatalyst. In this work, we report a facile impregnation method to prepare BiOCl nanosheets on rutile TiO2 nanorod arrays on transparent conductive fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate. According to RhB photocatalytic degradation experiments, the degradation efficiency of the immobilized BiOCl/TiO2 (denoted as BCTO-3) hybrid photocatalyst can reach 99.1% after visible light irradiation for 3 h, and its efficiency is higher than that of pure BiOCl (42.7%) and TiO2 (44.8%), respectively. The enhancement is demonstrated to be the match of energy level between BiOCI and TiO2. Hence, the separation and transfer of photogenerated electron-hole pairs are obviously improved, which have been illustrated by the result of the photoluminescence spectra analysis and photoelectrochemical performance. Moreover, the degradation efficiency of BCTO-3 can still reach 91.7% after eight times photodegradation cycle experiments. Due to the easy recycling and excellent durability, the immobilized BCTO-3 photocatalyst is considered as a promising photocatalytic material for the removal of organic pollutants in aqueous eco-environments. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.