Abstract
Bismuth containing nanomaterials recently received increasing attention with respect to environmental applications because of their low cost, high stability and nontoxicity. In this work, Bi-Bi(2)O(2)CO(3) heterojunctions were fabricated by in-situ decoration of Bi nanoparticles on Bi(2)O(2)CO(3) nanosheets via a simple hydrothermal synthesis approach. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) were used to confirm the morphology of the nanosheet-like heterostructure of the Bi-Bi(2)O(2)CO(3) composite. Detailed ultrafast electronic spectroscopy reveals that the in-situ decoration of Bi nanoparticles on Bi(2)O(2)CO(3) nanosheets exhibit a dramatically enhanced electron-hole pair separation rate, which results in an extraordinarily high photocatalytic activity for the degradation of a model organic dye, methylene blue (MB) under visible light illumination. Cycling experiments revealed a good photochemical stability of the Bi-Bi(2)O(2)CO(3) heterojunction under repeated irradiation. Photocurrent measurements further indicated that the heterojunction incredibly enhanced the charge generation and suppressed the charge recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs.