Fabrication of Cu2O/Au/BiPO4 Z-scheme photocatalyst to improve the photocatalytic activity under solar light

• We prepared a novel Z-scheme Cu2O/Au/BiPO4 composite.
• The Z-scheme photocatalytic system can remain the strong reducibility and oxidizability of the both photocatalysts.
• The solar light was made the utmost use both the ultraviolet and visible region light.

Compared with the conventional p–n heterojunction photocatalysts, the Z-scheme photocatalytic system can remain the strong reducibility and oxidizability of the photocatalysts. In order to make the utmost use of solar light, we designed a novel Cu2O/Au/BiPO4 Z-scheme system and studied its photocatalytic activity under solar light irradiation. The methyl orange was fully decolorized after 60 min irradiation by employing Cu2O/Au/BiPO4 Z-scheme sample as photocatalyst. Such excellent performance should be attributed to the Z-scheme system, which could improve the separation efficiency of photoinduced carriers and is beneficial to suppress the recombination of electron–holes. It was worth pointing out that the metallic Au species not only acted as the solid state electron mediator, but also could absorbed photons from incident light and present surface plasmon resonance effect in this hybridization system.

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