Oxygen\nVacancy Induced Bismuth Oxyiodide with Remarkably Increased Visible-Light\nAbsorption and Superior Photocatalytic Performance

Abstract

With the increasingly serious environmental\nproblems, photocatalysis has recently attracted a great deal of attention,\nwith particular focus on water and air purification and disinfection.\nHerein, we show an electroreduction strategy to improve significantly\nthe solar absorption and donor density of BiOI nanosheet photocatalyst\nby introducing oxygen vacancies. These oxygen-deficient BiOI nanosheets\nexhibit an unexpected red shift of about 100 nm in light absorption\nband and 1 order of magnitude improvement in donor density compared\nto the untreated BiOI nanosheets and show 10 times higher photocatalytic\nactivity than the untreated BiOI nanosheets for methyl orange (MO)\ndegradation under visible light irradiation. Moreover, the as-prepared\noxygen-deficient BiOI nanosheets also have excellent cycling stability\nand superior photocatalytic performance toward other dye pollutants.