Investigation of structural and photocatalytic behavior of Bi13B1-2xVxPxO20.95+2x (0 < x ≤ 0.5)

The aim of this study was to investigate the photocatalytic activity of polycrystalline phases of bismuth vanadate of formula Bi13B1-2xVx PxO20.95+2x with x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.25, 0.4 and 0.5. The catalysts were prepared by solid state method at 700 degrees C and were further characterized using a variety characterization techniques such X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Xray energy dispersion spectroscopy (EDS). The photocatalytic experiments were carried out using rhodamine B (RhB) as a model pollutant; the UV-visible spectrometry was used to analyze the evolution of dye degradation. The obtained photocatalytic results clearly indicated that all as-prepared photocatalysts exhibited higher photocatalytic activities than that of the pure Bi13B1-2xVx PxO20.95+2x with x = 0. The best degradation performance is obtained when using the Bi13B1-2xVx PxO20.95+2x with x = 0.2 catalyst. Moreover, the complete degradation of RhB can be achieved after 180 min of UV irradiation in the presence of this catalyst.