Hydrothermal Fabrication of BiVO₄/ Diatomite Composite Photocatalysts and their Photocatalytic Performance

Abstract:

A hydrothermal process was proposed to prepare BiVO₄/ diatomite composite photocatalysts, where BiVO₄ was grown from a precursor solution containing diatomite, and EDTA used as a chelating agent to prevent the precipitation of precursor solution compositions on diatomite before hydrothermal treatment. The effect of some processing parameters like diatomite percentage and Ag-loaded amount on their photocatalytic performance were also investigated in detail by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), BET, and UV‐Vis spectroscopy. The results show that BiVO₄/ diatomite composite photocatalysts can be successfully prepared at 160 °C for the duration of 3h by the hydrothermal process. The diatomite has two significant impacts on their photocatalytic performance: (1) enhancing the dispersion of BiVO₄ crystallites due to its high porosity and specific surface area to favor their photocatalytic performance, and (2) having a light screening effect to incident visible light to decrease their photocatalytic activity. Appropriately incorporating diatomite could improve their photocatalytic performance, but the overuse of diatomite would reduce that. Similarly, depositing Ag could effectively improve their photocatalytic activity because of its good light absorption and photosensitive characteristics, but excessive addition would result in their decrease since the overuse of Ag would also promote the electron-hole recombination.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 904)
• Pages: 350-357
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.904.350
• Online since: November 2021
• Authors: Tian Qing Cui, Jun Feng Ma*, Qun Si Wang, Qi Zhou, Dong Bin Tang
• Keywords: Bismuth Vanadate, Diatomite, Hydrothermal Process, Photocatalyst

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