Confined active species and effective charge separation in Bi4O5I2 ultrathin hollow nanotube with increased photocatalytic activity

Abstract Novel 1D Bi4O5I2 hollow nanotube (Bi4O5I2-HNT) material has been controlled synthesized via a facile PVP-assisted solvothermal method for the first time. Different parameters to control the formation of Bi4O5I2-HNT were tuned, such as usage amount of PVP, reaction temperature and mannitol concentration. Furthermore, structure, surface chemical composition, optical absorption ability and photogenerated charge separation efficiency of as-prepared Bi4O5I2 nanosheet and Bi4O5I2-HNT samples have been measured. Benefiting from the specific ultrathin hollow nanotube structure to produce confined highly concentrated active species and excellent electrical conductivity, Bi4O5I2-HNT material exhibited the increased photocatalytic degradation performance towards bisphenol A relative to Bi4O5I2 nanosheet. This work opens the door for designing other Bi-based photocatalysts via facile soft-template-assisted method to achieve a high-efficient photocatalytic performance.