Continuously enhanced photoactivity of hierarchical β-Bi2O3/Bi2S3 heterostructure derived from novel BiO2CH3 octagonal nanoplates

• Organometallic BiO2CH3 octagonal nanoplate was synthesized using Bi2O3 firstly.
• β-Bi2O3/Bi2S3 hybrids show continuously enhanced cycling photocatalytic behavior.
• Lattice distortion of Bi2O3−xSx lead to increased e−/h+ separation efficiency.

BiO2CH3 nanoplate, a new organometallic crystal, with octagonal morphology is successfully prepared using methanol solvothermal method and further employed as template to fabricate porous β-Bi2O3 octagonal nanoplates with a thickness of less than 50 nm. Then a series of hierarchical octagonal haystack-like β-Bi2O3/Bi2S3 hybrids with large heterointerface and small bandgaps (1.36–1.44 eV) are constructed. It is found that, different from many regular photocatalysts that suffer from shrink of photocatalytic efficiency, the photoactivities of all β-Bi2O3/Bi2S3 heterostructures are continuously enhanced with growing test cycles, owing to the formation of Bi2O3−xSx solid solution, in which the built-in electric filed induced by lattice distortion can brings about higher e−/h+ separation efficiency. The gradually increasing photocatalytic activity can reach to an up limit in about 5 photocatalytic cycles and maintain at this level. β-Bi2O3/Bi2S3 heterostructure loaded with 20 mol% of Bi2S3 is demonstrated to be the best photocatalyst and capable of fully decomposing Rh B in 30 min. Our work provides deep insights into the nature of the inversed photocatalytic behavior and facilitates the advanced design of photocatalysts with unabated photoactivities.

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