Bismuth-rich strategy induced photocatalytic molecular oxygen activation properties of bismuth oxyhalogen: The case of Bi24O31Cl10

• Bismuth-rich strategy can be used to promote the CBM of bismuth oxyhalide.
• Bi24O31Cl10 nanosheets with {1 0 0} facets exposure were successfully synthesized.
• As-synthesized Bi24O31Cl10 can effectively activate molecular oxygen.

Molecular oxygen activation is very important for photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants. In this paper, Bi24O31Cl10 nanosheets with {1 0 0} facets exposure were successfully synthesized by hydromel method and characterized. The size of a single nanosheet is about 5 μm in width and 10–30 nm in thickness, which results in a large ratio of surface to thickness and higher exposure ratio of {1 0 0} facets. The Mott–Schottky test revealed that the conduction band minimum (CBM) of Bi24O31Cl10 is more negative than BiOCl due to the bismuth-rich strategy. And the photocatalytic results showed that as-synthesized Bi24O31Cl10 showed higher photocatalytic properties than BiOCl for activate molecular oxygen to generate superoxide radical (O2
• −) under visible light (λ > 420 nm) irradiation, and generate hydroxyl radical (
• OH) under UV–vis light irradiation. This strategy in this work may potentially be extended to other bismuth-based photocatalysts for molecular oxygen activation.

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