The elemental erbium doped mesoporous Bi2MoO6 hollow spheres were successfully synthesized using a mild one-step hydrothermal route, which simultaneously possess abundant surface active sites, remarkable charge separation efficiency and excellent solar energy harvesting ability, thereby enabling excellent photocatalytic degradation performance. This new hybrid photocatalyst was characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), optical diffuse-reflection spectra (DRS), Photoluminescence spectrum (PL) etc. The experiment results indicated that the optimized doping ratio of elemental Er is about 1% (mol%). Through photocatalytic degradation experiments, we can clearly obtained that the as-prepared Er-Bi2MoO6 hybrid catalyst exhibits very excellent photocatalytic performance, which is much higher than that of pure Bi2MoO6 photocatalyst. The photocatalytic activity enhancement of Bi2MoO6 mainly can be attributed to the introducing of Er3+, which can transform visible light into ultraviolet light, leading to the broad spectrum photocatalytic activity of as-prepared material. Moreover, the novel mesoporous hollow structure simultaneously endowed the as-prepared catalyst with large active area and efficient charge separation. This work not only developed a novel Bi2MoO6 based photocatalyst with excellent photocatalytic activity, but also put forward a new pathway to utilize rare earth elements to optimize photocatalytic performance.

Towards understanding the photocatalytic activity enhancement of Bi2MoO6 based photocatalyst via elemental erbium (Er) incorporation

254th National Meeting (2017)

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