Synthesis of sillenite-type Bi₃₆Fe₂O₅₇ and elemental bismuth with visible-light photocatalytic activity for water treatment

Abstract

With Fe(NO₃)₃·9H₂O and Bi(NO₃)₃·5H₂O as raw materials, different sillenite-type compounds and elemental bismuth were prepared by a facile one-pot solvothermal method using H₂O, C₂H₅OH, (CH₂OH)₂ and C₃H₈O₃ as solvents, respectively. The structure, morphology, elemental compositions and properties of samples were examined by XRD, SEM, TEM, ICP, XPS, N₂ adsorption and desorption, UV-vis DRS and PL. The photocatalytic activities of different samples were evaluated by the photodegradation of RhB under visible-light irradiation (l>400 nm), and results show that Bi₃₆Fe₂O₅₇ prepared using C₂H₅OH as the solvent owns the optimum performance. In order to explore the reaction mechanism, an additional experiment was designed to investigate the main active species during the photodegradation process via dissolving different trapping agents in the reaction solution before light irradiation. The results show that superoxide radical anions play a major role in this system since the RhB degradation was significantly suppressed after the addition of benzoquinone.

Keywords

photocatalysis / sillenite / elemental Bi / Bi₃₆Fe₂O₅₇

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the Scientific Research Foundation for Young Scientists of Shanxi Province (201601D021134), the Scientific Research Foundation for Young Scientists of Taiyuan University of Science and Technology (20153008), the Start-up Fund for Doctorate Scientific Research Project of Taiyuan University of Science and Technology (20152017), and the Shanxi Provincial Student’s Platform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (2016282).

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