Low-Temperature Synthesis and High Visible-Light-Induced Photocatalytic Activity of BiOI/TiO 2 Heterostructures

BiOI/TiO2 heterostructures with different Bi to Ti molar ratios were synthesized through a simple soft-chemical method at a temperature as low as 80 °C. The as-prepared powders were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, electron microscopy, UV−vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, nitrogen sorption, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The photocatalytic activities of these BiOI/TiO2 heterostructures were evaluated on the degradation of methyl orange under visible-light irradiation (λ > 420 nm). The results revealed that the BiOI/TiO2 heterostructures exhibited much higher photocatalytic activities than pure BiOI and TiO2, respectively, and 50%BiOI/TiO2 showed the best activity among all these…