Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) is a highly
promising
method to enhance the catalytic performance of photocatalysts. As
an earth-abundant metal element, bismuth (Bi) holds a great promise
as an economically feasible substitute for expensive noble metals
to prepare metal/semiconductor composite-based plasmon-enhanced photocatalysts,
which urgently need promising semiconductors to couple with Bi. Herein,
we demonstrate that covalent organic frameworks (COFs) can be used
as promising candidates to prepare high-performance Bi/COF plasmonic
photocatalysts by providing large numbers of active sites for the in situ growth of non-noble metal Bi, exposing more active
sites, and overcoming the problems of low active oxygen utilization
and blocked charge transfer. As-prepared Bi/COF nanoheterojunctions
not only show increased visible light harvesting, accelerated electron
transfer, and retarded charge recombination but also well maintain
the strong substrate adsorption capability of COFs, making the photocatalytic
reactions work in an adsorption-assisted manner. Via a plasmon-sensitized
hot electron injection-based photocatalytic mechanism, the proposed
Bi/COF photocatalyst works well in the visible-light photocatalytic
degradation of organic pollutants with complete photodegradation of
4-chlorophenol (4-CP) within 70 min. This work not only provides a
non-noble metal Bi-based plasmonic photocatalyst with excellent catalytic
performance but also paves a promising way to construct adsorption-assisted
photocatalytic systems by using COFs.