• Journal of Inorganic Materials
  • Vol. 35, Issue 11, 1255 (2020)
Qian ZHENG1、2, Yuehan CAO2, Nanjian HUANG2, Fan DONG, and Ying ZHOU1、2、*
Author Affiliations
  • 1State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
  • 2The Center of New Energy Materials and Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China. 3. Research Center for Environmental Science & Technology, Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China;
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    DOI: 10.15541/jim20200024 Cite this Article
    Qian ZHENG, Yuehan CAO, Nanjian HUANG, Fan DONG, Ying ZHOU. BiOBr-BN Photocatalysts for Promoting Photocatalytic NO Oxidation and Inhibiting Toxic By-products[J]. Journal of Inorganic Materials, 2020, 35(11): 1255 Copy Citation Text show less

    Abstract

    Photocatalysis has been regarded as an emerging and promising air purification technology. However, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) as the by-product is easily generated in the process of photocatalytic NO oxidation, which is more toxic and harmful to human health than NO. To inhibit the generation of NO2 and promote the deep oxidation of No into nitrate (NO3-), boron nitride (BN) nanosheets was used as templates and bismuth oxybromide (BiOBr) nanosheets were introduced by the in-situ growth method to fabricate the two dimensional-two dimensional (2D-2D) BiOBr-BN photocatalysts. After introducing the BN nanosheets, the thickness and diameter of BiOBr nanosheets greatly decrease. At the same time, the specific surface area of 5% BiOBr-BN increases nearly by 15 times compared with the pure BiOBr nanosheets, which could provide more active sites for the reaction. According to the photocatalytic NO removal tests, the composites present the higher photocatalytic activity than pure BiOBr nanosheets and BN nanosheets. Among them, 5% BiOBr-BN sample reveals the best NO removal rate of 39.5%, which is higher than that of pure BiOBr nanosheets (24.6%) under visible light irradiation. More importantly, the NO2 generation rate is suppressed from 16.4% to 7% and the oxidation selectivity of NO3- is increased from 36.6% to 81.5% compared with the pure BiOBr nanosheets. On the one hand, there is a strong interfacial interaction between BiOBr nanosheets and BN nanosheets, identifying by the X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Density Functional Theory (DFT) results. Hence, 0.98 e electrons transfer from BiOBr to BN through the interface area, resulting in the formation of built-in electric field. Benefiting from this, the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers is effectively inhibited. On the other hand, BiOBr as the active surface enhances the adsorption of O2 and promotes its activation to superoxide radicals (·O2-), which is proved by DFT and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) results. As a result, the generation of toxic by-product NO2 is effectively inhibited and NO can be directly oxidized into NO3-. These findings could provide a facial strategy for the design of 2D-2D photocatalysts and control of the separation of photo-generated electrons and holes.
    Qian ZHENG, Yuehan CAO, Nanjian HUANG, Fan DONG, Ying ZHOU. BiOBr-BN Photocatalysts for Promoting Photocatalytic NO Oxidation and Inhibiting Toxic By-products[J]. Journal of Inorganic Materials, 2020, 35(11): 1255
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