Synthetic bismuth silicate nanostructures: Photocatalysts grown from silica aerogels precursors
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Suci Meng School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China; and Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Mesoscopic Chemistry of MOE, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China
Xiaomeng Lü, Zaoxue Yan, Jianjun Zhu, and Henglv Cui School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China (Received 31 August 2012; accepted 8 March 2013)
Bismuth silicate with two morphologies (nanoflowers/nanoplates) was successfully fabricated with silica aerogels via a hydrothermal method in polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-mediated processes for the first time. The obtained nanomaterials were characterized using x-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area analysis, and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. It was found that the concentration of PVP plays an important role in the formation of the hierarchical nanoflowers. The formation mechanism for this novel morphology was proposed on the basis of experimental results. Moreover, the photocatalytic performances of Bi2SiO5 nanoflowers/nanoplates were also investigated. The results revealed that Bi2SiO5 nanoflowers exhibited higher activity than Bi2SiO5 nanoplates due to its suitable morphology, higher BET surface area.
I. INTRODUCTION
Visible light-driven photocatalysts have attracted significant interests in recent years because visible light is an important clean energy and can be easily utilized. To use solar energy efficiently, the key step is to explore new visible light-driven photocatalysts.1,2 The various types of inorganic compounds that are active photocatalyst, including TiO2, WO3, ZnO, and Bi2WO6 have been synthesized by various kinds of methods.3–6 It is highly attractive and desirable to synthesize new type of materials with fine structures, although it is still a big challenge. Bismuth silicate (Bi2SiO5) was first reported in 1996.7 Bi2SiO5 has an orthorhombic crystal structure and belongs to Cmc21 space group. It is composed of (SiO3) 2 pyroxene file layers inserted between (Bi2O2)21 layers.8 After the first report, nanostructured Bi2SiO5 has attracted great interests owing to the interesting functional performance during the past several years. It has been reported as a material with relatively good dielectric properties7 and pyroelectric and nonlinear optical effects.8 Until recently, synthetic microstructure/nanostructure photocatalysts are found to display interesting photocatalytic activities in a)
Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.1557/jmr.2013.65 1658
J. Mater. Res., Vol. 28, No. 13, Jul 14, 2013
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Mar 2015
environmental application.9–11 Chen et al.9 prepared pure Bi2SiO5 nanoplates by a hydrothermal method, which first showed photocatalytic activities. Zhang et al.10 synthesized Bi2SiO5 microspheres that exhibited good photoactivitity in the degradation of phenol in water. Z
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