First-principles investigation of impurity concentration influence on bonding behavior, electronic structure and visible light absorption for Mn-doped BiOCl photocatalyst

We performed first-principles calculation to investigate the bonding behavior, electronic structure and visible light absorption of MnxBi1−xOCl (x=0, 0.0625, 0.09375 and 0.125) using density functional theory (DFT) within a plane-wave ultrasoft pseudopotential scheme. The relaxed structural parameters are consistent with the experimental results. The bonding behavior, bond orders, Mulliken charges and bond populations as well as formation energies are obtained. The calculated band structures and density of states show that Mn incorporation results in some impurity energy levels of Mn 3d states in forbidden band as well as valence band and conduction band, and that Mn 3d states, for the modest Mn doping concentration, not only can act as the capture center of excited electrons under longer wavelength light irradiation, but also may trap the photo-excited holes, improving the transfer of photo-excited carriers to the reactive sites. Our calculated optical absorption spectra exhibit that the spectral absorption edge is obviously red-shifted and extends to the visible, red and infrared light region due to the incorporation of Mn. Our calculated absorption spectra are in excellent agreement with the experimental results of Mn-doped BiOCl photocatalyst.