One novel material with high visible-light activity: hexagonal Cu flakelets embedded in the petals of BiOBr flower-nanospheres

摘要

The novel BiOBr flower-nanospheres embedded by hexagonal Cu have been synthesized successfully through an ingenious design, by one-step solvothermal process with two kinds of bifunctional reagents, namely, 1-hexadecyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide C(16)minBr and ethylene glycol (EG). Pure BiOBr flower-sphere has been synthesized by solvothermal process. In the result of Cu-embedded BiOBr flower-nanospheres, the diameter of the flower-sphere is about 1.5 mu m (+/- 0.1) with hexagon copper about 10-nm side length in the petals of BiOBr flower-nanospheres. The Cu-embedded BiOBr composites exhibit high photocatalytic activity than pure BiOBr, which was investigated by the degradation of rhodamine B solution (RhB) and methyl orange solution (MO) under simulative visible-light irradiation. Nearly 100 and 80 of conversion can be achieved from the degradation of RhB and MO after 1.5 h, respectively. The high ability of photocatalysis may be attributed to the narrow-band-gap semiconductor BiOBr, high electron transportation of copper, and the coupling of Cu and BiOBr. It can lead to the strong absorption in the visible region and improve the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs.