BiOmFn/BiOxIy/GO Nanocomposites: Synthesis, characterization, and photocatalytic activity

Abstract This is the first paper to report a series of bismuth oxyfluoride/bismuth oxyiodide/graphene oxide (BiO m F n /BiO x I y /GO) nanocomposites with different GO contents that were synthesized through a simple hydrothermal method and characterized using X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy–energy dispersive spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller specific surface areas, and UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The BiO m F n /BiO x I y /GO composites exhibited excellent photocatalytic activities in the degradation of crystal violet (CV) and 2-hydroxybenzoic acid (HBA) under visible-light irradiation. The order of rate constants appears to be Bi 50 O 59 F 32 /BiOI/GO > BiOF/BiOI/GO > BiOI > Bi 50 O 59 F 32 /BiOI/Bi 5 O 7 I/GO > BiOF > GO. The photocatalytic activity of Bi 50 O 59 F 32 /BiOI/GO composites reached a maximum rate constant of 0.2539 h −1 , which is 1.1 times higher than that of Bi 50 O 59 F 32 /BiOI and 1.3 and 110 times higher than those of BiOI and Bi 50 O 59 F 32 , respectively.