Enhanced photoelectrocatalytic performance from size effects in pure and La-doped BiFeO 3 nanoparticles
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Enhanced photoelectrocatalytic performance from size effects in pure and La‑doped BiFeO3 nanoparticles Chuanfu Huang1 · Xiaoli Zhang1 · Heng Zhang1 · Wei Zhang1 · Changyong Lan2 · Mingxue Li1 Received: 3 February 2020 / Accepted: 9 March 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Due to the energy crisis, the development of high-performance photoelectrocatalysts is becoming a hot research area in recent years. Among the materials studied, BiFeO3 (BFO) exhibits excellent photoelectrocatalytic performance due to its moderate bandgap and unique band structure. In this paper, both pure BFO and La-doped BFO were synthesized by solgel method. The average size of the BFO nanoparticles was tuned from 65 to 440 nm. For the La-doped BFO, the average size of the nanoparticles was reduced from 95 to 40 nm with the increase in doping level from 0 to 30%. Next, the photoelectrocatalytic performance of the pure BFO nanoparticles were enhanced with the reduction in nanoparticle size, which was possibly caused by increased surface-to-volume ratio. For the increase in doping of La, the corresponding photoelectrocatalytic performance was first enhanced and then degraded. To understand the obtained results, a mechanism was proposed, which can be attributed to the competition between geometric size effects and surface effects. Our findings provided a controlled way to tune the photoelectrocatalytic performance of BFO system, which is crucial for practical applications. Keywords BiFeO3 nanoparticles · La-doped · Enhanced photoelectrocatalytic properties · Competition mechanism
1 Introduction The development of high-performance photocatalysts is very important due to energy crisis and becomes a hot topic in recent years [1–4]. BFO, a single-phase multiferroic material that can be modified by doping other elements to acquire the improved ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties [5–7], has also shown potential application in photoelectrocatalytic area because of its moderate bandgap (~ 2.3 eV) and unique band structure [8–10]. Until now, many researchers have investigated the photoelectrocatalytic properties of BFO Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-3459-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Chuanfu Huang [email protected] * Mingxue Li [email protected] 1
School of Materials Science and Physics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, Jiangsu, China
School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Sichuan 610054, China
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nanoparticles or films, but the low activity of BFO is still a big challenge [11–14]. In order to improve its photoelectrocatalytic property, various methods were used. For instance, Gu et al. inserted a layer of porous carbon into the BFO film and Pt catalyst and found the enhanced photocathodic performance [15]. In other aspects, to attain a satisfactory photocatalyst of BFO, one impo
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