Low temperature synthesis of Bi2WO6 and its photocatalytic activities

• The nanostructured Bi2WO6 is synthesized at 95 °C.
• The formation mechanisms of different Bi2WO6 structures are discussed.
• The as-prepared Bi2WO6 has better photocatalytic characteristics.

In this paper, nanostructured Bi2WO6 was synthesized using a hydrothermal method at 95 °C, the structure and photocatalytic properties of Bi2WO6 were investigated. The effects of different surfactants and solvents on the morphology and photocatalytic performance of Bi2WO6 were also discussed. The results showed that different surfactants have a great impact on the morphology and size of the prepared Bi2WO6. The Bi2WO6 which used water as solvent and polyvinylpyrrolidone as surfactant had the most obvious photocatalytic effect. When using methyl orange as a degradation target, the degradation rate was 67.14% at 60 min, and reached 74.29% at 180 min. Compared with other traditional high temperature methods, this synthetic method is simple, and could be used for large-scale production in the future.

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