Solvothermal synthesis of three-dimensional microspherical bismuth oxychloride self-assembled by microspheres

• Uniform BiOCl microspheres have been synthesized via a solvothermal route.
• BiOCl microspheres possessed a superstructure.
• These microspheres were of hollow structures.
• BiOCl microspheres showed good photocatalytic performance.

Uniform BiOCl microspheres have been synthesized via a facile solvothermal route. The structural features of the as-prepared BiOCl samples were systematically characterized by the X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The SEM characterization results indicated that BiOCl microspheres possessed a superstructure composed of several hierarchical microspheres, which were assembled by numerous two dimensional nanosheets. This kind of special BiOCl 3D microstructure exhibited a large BET surface area of about 14.24 m2 g−1. Besides, the photocatalytic properties of BiOCl hollow microsphere sample and sheet-like sample were investigated in detail. Significantly, BiOCl hollow microsphere sample presented faster degradation rate toward RhB even under visible light, which should be attributed to the unique BiOCl nanosheets self-assembled hollow microspheres.