Construction of exfoliated g-C3N4 nanosheets–BiOCl hybrids with enhanced photocatalytic performance

Exfoliated g-C3N4 nanosheets (CNs) were composited with bismuth oxychloride (BiOCl) to fabricate a series of hybrids via a facile chemical deposition–precipitation method in this investigation. The as-synthesized BiOCl–CNs hybrids were then fully characterized by a collection of analytical techniques. It was obviously observed that CNs were in intimate contact with hierarchical BiOCl flowerlike units to form heterojunction structures, which facilitates transfer and efficient separation of photoinduced electron–hole pairs, thus greatly increasing catalytic activity upon visible light irradiation. Together with other merits such as enlarged specific surface area, favorable optical properties, and suitable energy-band structures, these robust BiOCl–CNs hybrids showed significantly enhanced photocatalytic performance towards Rhodamine B (RhB) dye removal. Under identical conditions, the apparent photocatalytic reaction rate of the best hybrid BiOCl–CNs-3% was about 2.1 and 26.6 times as high as those of BiOCl and CNs alone, respectively. A possible photocatalytic mechanism was also proposed by means of active species trapping measurements, revealing that superoxide radicals (˙O2−) played a crucial role during the catalytic process.