Synthesis of Bi₆O₆(OH)₃(NO₃)₃·1.5H₂O/ZnO composite material with excellent photocatalytic hydrogen production performance

Abstract

The heterojunction effect can effectively improve the separation efficiency of the photocatalyst's photo-generated electron and hole pairs, thereby greatly improving the photocatalytic hydrogen production performance of the photocatalyst. In this paper, Bi 6 O 6 (OH) 3 (NO 3 ) 3 • 1.5H 2 O (BBN) and ZnO are used to construct and synthesize Bi 6 O 6 (OH) 3 (NO 3 ) 3 • 1.5H 2 O/ZnO (BBN/ZnO) heterojunction photocatalyst. Under UV-vis light irradiation, the BBN/ZnO composite could generate H 2 with a rate of 28.66 μmol•g −1 •h −1 , which is higher than pure BBN (0.92 μmol•g −1 •h −1 ) and ZnO (6.54 μmol•h −1 •g −1 ) at around 31.1 and 4.4 times, respectively. Moreover, the experimental results found that the composite still exhibits excellent photocatalytic activity and maintains a high and stable activity in the 12-hour experiment with 3 cycles. The possible mechanism to enhance the photocatalytic behavior is attributed to the expanded light absorption range, reduced surface migration resistance, and inhibited recombination of photo-generated electron and hole pairs.