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Photocatalytic performance of inverse-opal g-carbon nitride and bismuth oxide compositing microstructures

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Abstract

The development of visible-light photocatalytic materials in porous morphology with suitable photon management is significant for energy utilization and environmental protection. g-C3N4 and Bi2O3 are both typical visible-light semiconductor photocatalysts and their inverse-opal structures could provide larger surface area. Meanwhile, the fabrication of heterojunction composites is conducive to suppress the recombination of photo-generated carriers and enhance the photocatalytic performance. In this work, g-C3N4 inverse opals on the basis of TiO2 or TiO2/SiO2 framework and Bi2O3 inverse opals were successfully synthesized by a simple sol-gel method. The photocatalytic performance gets improved with the introduction of g-C3N4 in inverse opals, and the removal of SiO2 in SiO2/TiO2 framework provides additional mesoporous morphologies which further advances the light harvesting efficiency. The photocurrent densities of the inverse-opal structures are all higher than the corresponding films. The photonic band gap position originated from the periodicity of inverse opals was modulated by using colloidal crystals template in different diameters. Better photochemical characteristics are achieved when the absorption peak of Bi2O3 is coincident with the high-frequency photonic band edge of inverse opals. The heterostructures consisting of g-C3N4 inverse opals and Bi2O3 inverse opals were fabricated and stronger optical absorption and higher transient photocurrent responses are presented compared with both individual inverse-opal structures.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Science Foundation of China under grants of Nos. 52173272, 51772021.

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Author notes

  1. Zheli Wu and Tingwan Sun equally contributed to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Luminescence and Optical Information, Ministry of Education, Institute of Optoelectronic Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, People’s Republic of China

    Zheli Wu, Tingwan Sun, Caixia Li, Xiaoyu Liu, Jiefeng Li, Ming Fu, Dawei He & Yongsheng Wang

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  1. Zheli Wu
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  2. Tingwan Sun
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  3. Caixia Li
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Correspondence to Ming Fu.

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Wu, Z., Sun, T., Li, C. et al. Photocatalytic performance of inverse-opal g-carbon nitride and bismuth oxide compositing microstructures. J Porous Mater 30, 2121–2128 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10934-023-01492-6

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