Construction of an Ag3PO4 morphological homojunction for enhanced photocatalytic performance and mechanism investigation

Homojunction construction is attractive for developing high-performance semiconductor photocatalysts. In this study, a facile combination process was employed for the first time to fabricate the Ag3PO4 morphological homojunction consisting of submicron spherical and rhombic dodecahedron particles, which could achieve morphology control and homojunction manipulation simultaneously. The enhancement of photocatalytic activity was attributed to that the formation of morphological homojunction which consists of rhombic dodecahedral Ag3PO4 (RDA) and submicron spherical Ag3PO4 (SSA) with different band structures, which promotes efficient separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs and leads to high photocatalytic activity. The different band structures of Ag3PO4 indicate that morphology affects the valence and conduction band position of semiconductors, and further verifies the formation of morphological homojunction. The finding of our work illustrated that the fabrication of Ag3PO4 morphological homojunction was a promising strategy to be applied in photocatalysis and photoelectric conversion.