Novel AgI-decorated β-Bi2O3 nanosheet heterostructured Z-scheme photocatalysts for efficient degradation of organic pollutants with enhanced performance

The low photocatalytic activity of single semiconductor photocatalysts mainly originates from their fast recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Constructing nanosheet-based composite photocatalysts is an effective way to enhance the charge separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. In this work, AgI-decorated beta-Bi2O3 nanosheet heterostructured photocatalysts were prepared by a facile method. The as-obtained AgI/beta-Bi2O3 heterostructures exhibited enhanced visible-light-driven photocatalytic activity towards the degradation of methyl orange (MO) and tetracycline hydrochloride (TC) in aqueous solution. The optimum photocatalytic activity of 20%-AgI/beta-Bi2O3 for the degradation of MO was about 4.1 and 6.2 times higher than that of AgI and beta-Bi2O3. The photocatalytic activity enhancement of AgI/beta-Bi2O3 heterostructures could be ascribed to the formation of a Z-scheme system, which results in the efficient space separation of photo-induced charge carriers.