Research PaperFabrication of InVO4/AgVO3 heterojunctions with enhanced photocatalytic antifouling efficiency under visible-light

- Novel visible-light InVO4/AgVO3 photocatalysts were synthesized via an ion exchange followed by in-situ growth process.
- The 0.5InVO4/AgVO3 heterojunctional photocatalyst showed the highest photocatalytic efficiency for marine antifouling.
- The enhanced photocatalytic efficiency can be explained by Z-scheme that significantly improved the separation of electron-hole.

With the increasing of bacterial resistance to available antibiotics and water contamination by poisonous organic dyes, it's necessary to consider how to overcome these concerns. In this paper, novel visible-light-sensitive InVO4/AgVO3 photocatalysts with a p-n junction were synthesized through an ion exchange and in-situ growth process. The obtained photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-DRS) respectively. It can be observed that the AgVO3 exhibits a rod-shaped structure, while a plentiful of spherical shaped InVO4 particles are formed on the surface. The rod-shaped structure of AgVO3 wasn't changed by the addition of InVO4, but its photocatalytic properties were tremendously improved. The best photocatalyst was 0.5InVO4/AgVO3, over which the Rhodamine B (RhB) solution was almost decomposed in 200 min under visible light irradiation. Moreover, about 99.9999% of P. aeruginosaudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) were killed over 0.5InVO4/AgVO3 at 30 min. From these results it can be inferred that 0.5InVO4/AgVO3 heterojunctional photocatalyst has an improved efficiency for the separation of the current carriers to enhance the photocatalytic performances. This result provided a valuable design for the novel InVO4/AgVO3 heterojunction photocatalysts with excellent photocatalytic properties used in marine antifouling.

The novel InVO4/AgVO3 heterojunction, a plentiful rod-like structure with spherical shapes, was prepared by an economical and effective method. The composite heterojunction showed excellent photocatalytic activities towards the degradation of RhB and the antifouling effects under visible light.139