Surfactant-Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis of Multilayered Flower-Like BiOBr with Enhanced Visible Light Photocatalytic Activity

Abstract

A novel multilayered flower-like structure of BiOBr was fabricated by mild and facile polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) K30-assisted hydrothermal method using stable, less toxic inorganic salts Bi(NO3)3•5H2O and NaBr as the starting materials. Such three-dimensional (3D) BiOBr assemblies were constructed layer-by-layer from a large number of two-dimensional (2D) nanoplates. Rhodamine B (RhB) photocatalytic degradation experiments showed that the BiOBr flowers exhibited higher visible-light photocatalytic activity than that of irregular BiOBr nanoplates. Therefore, the resulting flower-like BiOBr are very promising photocatalysts for the treatment of organic pollutants