Preparation of Yb3+/Er3+ co-doped BiOCl sheets as efficient visible-light-driven photocatalysts

• BiOCl sheets doped with different amount of Er3+ and/or Yb3+ ions were prepared.
• The thickness of BiOCl sheets decreased with the increase of Ln ions doping amount.
• The doped BiOCl exhibited high degradation efficiency for Rhodamine B dye.
• The doped BiOCl retained a good cycling stability.

Bismuth oxyhalide (BiOCl) has been demonstrated to be a new and excellent photocatalyst. To further improve its photocatalytic activity, we prepared BiOCl samples doped with different amount of Er3+ and/or Yb3+ ions by a simple hydrothermal method. These doped BiOCl samples exhibit sheet-shaped structure, and their thickness goes down from ~140 nm to ~80 nm with the increase of the Ln doping amount from 0 to 5%. Among these doped samples, BiOCl sheets co-doped with 2.0% Yb3+/0.5% Er3+ (BOC-2.5%) exhibits the highest degradation efficiency of 99.5% for Rhodamine B in 20 min under visible-light illumination, which is 2.8 times the efficiency of undoped BiOCl. Especially, BOC-2.5% still retains the photocatalytic activity of 80% after four cycling test, indicating a good stability. These results confirm that Yb3+/Er3+ co-doped BiOCl is an efficient and stable visible-light-driven photocatalyst.

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