Improvement of photocatalytic activity under solar light of BiVO4 microcrystals synthesized by surfactant-assisted hydrothermal method

In this paper, we reported the obtention of bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) microcrystals synthesized by the surfactant-assisted hydrothermal method with sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS). The specific surface area, structure, morphology and the photo-induced charge separation efficiency of BiVO4 microcrystals were characterized by means of Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) method, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and surface photovoltage spectroscopy (SPS), respectively. The results show that SDBS surfactant alters the surface parameters and the morphology, enhances the photo-induced charge separation efficiency of BiVO4 under solar light irradiation. The photocatalytic activity of catalysts for photocatalytic decolorization of Rhodamine B (RhB) aqueous solution under solar light irradiation was investigated. The results demonstrate that the photocatalytic activity for degradation of RhB relate to SDBS-BiVO4 microcrystals is 7.5 times that of the reference BiVO4 microcrystals and the underlying reason is suggested.