Fabrication of BiOCl with adjustable oxygen vacancies and greatly elevated photocatalytic activity by using bamboo fiber surface embellishment

Abstract In this demonstration, to promote the photocatalytic activity of BiOCl, environmentally friendly bamboo fiber (BF) was added into the synthesis system of BiOCl. The size of crystals and the content of oxygen vacancies (OVs) can be effectively controlled by BF. The crystal structure, morphology, light absorbance capacity, separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers, OVs, microchemical environment, active free radicals and photocatalytic performance were carefully investigated. The observations firmly confirm that BF can effectively affect the growth of BiOCl. More interestingly, the content of OVs can be easily regulated by adjusting the amount of BF. When the mass ratio of BF/BiOCl is 0.5%, the composite has the richest OVs and the best photocatalytic activity. Compared with the reference BiOCl, the degradation efficiency of tetracycline (TC) and Rhodamine B (RhB) on 0.50% BF-BOC under visible light irradiation increases by 7.2 times and 4.1 times, respectively. Moreover, the sample holds high defluorination efficiency toward destruction of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) than the reference BiOCl, which can be allocated to the greatly enhanced separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers and abundant OVs. This work provides an alternative strategy for preparation of highly activity photocatalysts for water pollution treatment.