Thesis
Bismuth oxychloride based nanomaterials for highly efficient photocatalytic applications
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2016
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/107154
Abstract
In recent decades, due to the increasing exploitation and usage of fossil fuels, human beings have to confront the crisis of environmental pollution, such as water pollution and air pollution. Researchers are trying to exploit new methods and alternative energy to solve environmental pollution problems. Among them, the photocatalysis technique has been considered as a prompt and important way for decomposing organic pollutants and producing hydrogen energy via light irradiation. In this way, organic pollutants could be degraded into non-hazardous compounds such as water, carbon dioxide and other non-toxic small molecules. Due to a wide band gap of conventional TiO2 (P25) photocatalyst, the P25 only responds to ultraviolet light which merely occupies 4% of sunlight energy. Because visible light occupies about 49% of sunlight energy so that great efforts have been made, for taking full advantage of solar energy, on exploring diverse novel photocatalysts working under visible light irradiation. Bismuth oxychloride (BiOCl) nanomaterials are of great importance for their high efficiency of visible-light photocatalysis, which draw large amount of attention currently. The photocatalytic property of the BiOCl semiconductor closely relies on morphologies and structures as well as compositions. In this thesis, well-crystallized BiOCl samples with different morphologies have been synthesized via a facile solvent-thermal method. The thickness of BiOCl nanosheets could be tuned by different amount of Cl sources and solvent ratio. We focused on polyol co-mediated preparation mechanism and gained optimized volume ratio between mannitol and ethylene glycol. By adjusting Cl precursor concentration, we obtained ultra-thin BiOCl nanosheets that showed outstanding visible light photocatalytic activity. After hybridization with AgCl semiconductor, the photocatalytic activity for degradation of dye solution was highly improved. The degradation mechanism for dye rhodamine B was discussed.
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Details
- Title
- Bismuth oxychloride based nanomaterials for highly efficient photocatalytic applications
- Creators
- Xiaoyu Li
- Contributors
- Yuehe Lin (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Mechanical and Materials Engineering, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525003901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis