Bismuth Nanoparticles with photocatalytic activity.

What is it about?

These types of heterostructures have shown advantages to improve the visible light responsive activity of Bi-based nanoparticles to facilitate the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. By fixing the experimental parameters, the synthesis route and Ag contents showed to play a very important role in the phase composition of the Ag-containing samples; the formation of Bi/Ag-Bi2O3/Bi2O2CO3 and Ag/Ag-Bi2O3/Bi2O2CO3 complex. The α-Bi2O3/Bi2O2CO3 heterostructure prepared by combined method exhibited higher photocatalytic efficiency (66.84%) for degrading methylene blue (MB) depending on Bi2O2CO3 component proportion. For the Ag-containing hybrid structures, the performance of their catalytic activity did not show an increase with respect to α-Bi2O3/Bi2O2CO3. However, in these samples, the degradation efficiency was slightly enhanced with the efficient doping of Ag into the α-Bi2O3 structure and the existence of Bi when the Pechini method was used. Also, a possible photocatalytic process for degrading MB is presented.

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Why is it important?

For obtaining Ag-containing complex hybrid structures, the Pechini methodology is recommended due to the effective doping of the α-Bi2O3 structure, achieving higher Ag contents into α-Bi2O3 as found for the 5Ag-P and 10Ag-P samples. Also, the existence of metallic Bi in Ag-containing samples enhanced the photocatalytic activity of the photocatalyst prepared by this method.

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