Surfactant Assisted Synthesis of BiVO4 by Low Temperature Solvothermal Method: Effect of Calcination for Photocatalytic Activity

Abstract

A visible light active semiconductor photocatalyst, BiVO4 was synthesized through low temperature solvothermal method in hot air oven followed by calcination. To enhance the degradation rate surfactants were employed, which shows the better degradation for calcinated hexamine added BiVO4, i.e. 74% of methylene blue was degraded in 180 min in visible light irradiation. The result is correlated with lower band gap energy value, i.e. 2.07 eV and lower photoluminescence emission spectra intensity. It was observed the variation in surface morphology of the prepared samples. The specific surface area of calcinated hexamine added BiVO4 was analyzed by BET analysis. All the prepared samples showed higher absorption in UV-visible region. The FTIR confirmed the presence of hexamine in the calcinated hexamine sample.