P-n Heterostructured design of decahedral NiS/BiVO4 with efficient charge separation for enhanced photodegradation of organic dyes

Abstract Constructing high efficient nanostructured photocatalysts is meaningful for dyeing wastewater treatment. Herein, a new p-n heterostructured photocatalyst of NiS/BiVO4 (NiS/BVO) was well designed, synthesized and applied to photodegrade anion organic dye. Coupling p-type NiS nanoparticles on n-type decahedral nanostructured BVO cannot obviously increase the specific surface area, but can effectively increase the light harvesting, enhance the photocurrent response, and promote the separation and transfer of the photo-generated electron-holes. As a result, 0.7 molar ratio of NiS/BVO exhibited the best photocatalytic capability of 95.6 % within 90 min irradiation, possessing the highest degradation rate of 1.7970 h−1, which is almost 16 and 33 times higher than pure BVO (15.8 %, 0.1134 h−1) and NiS (7.9 %, 0.0543 h−1). Meanwhile, NiS/BVO has well photocatalytic stability in at least five cycling tests.