Gd-BiVO4 photocatalyst for organic contaminants removal: Short-term synthesis at sub-100? and enhanced sunlight-driven photocatalytic activity

A novel and short-term preparation method was conducted to fabricate pristine BiVO4, and Gadolinium (Gd) doped BiVO4 photocatalysts at sub-100 ?. The optical, structural, morphology, microstructure, and composi-tional characteristics of the fabricated photocatalysts were examined, which illustrated that the doping of Gd stabilized the existence of the tetragonal phase structure and enlarged the specific surface area of the pristine BiVO4. The comparison of the photocatalytic performance, preparation power consumption, and preparation cost showed the superiority of Gd doped BiVO4 photocatalyst fabricated by the Short-Term Synthesis Method at sub -100 & DEG;C. The ofloxacin (OFL) removal rate with 5%, 7%, and 10% Gd-BiVO4 photocatalysts was 1.53, 1.61, and 1.83 times that with pristine BiVO4 under sunlight, respectively. The degradation performance of target con-taminants, including diclofenac, tetracycline HCl, ofloxacin, rhodamine B, and sulfadiazine, was demonstrated after one hour of sunlight irradiation with 5% Gd-BiVO4, achieving the removal efficiencies of 98.63%, 98.07%, 97.98%, 92.09%, and 78.56%, respectively. The effect of various factors on the removal performance was revealed, indicating that symbolscript and symbolscript had a remarkable inhibitory effect on the degradation. The 5% Gd-BiVO4 also showed excellent reusability and stability after five-cycle runs. The photogenerated holes symbolscript and the superoxide radicals symbolscript were the predominant generated active species, and the possible photocatalytic mechanism for the degradation of organic contaminants was proposed. Simple prepared Gd-BiVO4 photocatalysts were revealed to be a practical and potential choice for efficiently degrading contaminants with sunlight as green energy.