Enhanced Visible-Light Photocatalytic Remediation of Tetracycline Hydrochloride by Nanostructured BiOI Homojunctions

Abstract

The BiOI homojunctions were constructed between BiOI nanosheets and BiOI nanoflowers, which were prepared with a facile ultrasound-assisted solvothermal method. BiOI nanosheets were uniformly distributed on BiOI nanoflowers surface. The homojunction structure constructed between nanosheets and nanoflowers efficiently speeds up the transfer and separation of photoinduced charge carriers, which is beneficial to promote the photocatalytic activity. Compared with single BiOI, BiOI homojunctions exhibit remarkably improved photocatalytic degradation activity for tetracycline hydrochloride (TC); photodegradation rate of 69.43% for TC has been reached after being irradiated under visible light for 1[Formula: see text]h. Deeper analyses of photocatalytic degradation mechanism of TC have been conducted; the results identify that [Formula: see text] and h[Formula: see text] play important roles during the TC degradation reaction.