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Facile preparation of flexible polyacrylonitrile/BiOCl/BiOI nanofibers via SILAR method for effective floating photocatalysis

  • Original Paper: Sol-gel and hybrid materials for catalytic, photoelectrochemical and sensor applications
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Abstract

Flexible and floating photocatalysts have unique advantages in water pollution treatment due to their light-harvesting and recycle performance. Here, a facile successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method was used to layer by layer grow BiOCl/BiOI heterojunctions on self-supporting electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofiber mats at room temperature. This method enables tunable good interface contact of the heterojunctions while makes the composites maintain flexibility and floatable properties. The PAN/BiOCl/BiOI nanofibers show much better photocatalytic activity than the PAN/BiOCl and PAN/BiOI nanofibers. For removal of Rhodamine-B and Bisphenol-A, the degradation rates of PAN/BiOCl/BiOI nanofibers were about 1.68 and 1.41 times higher than PAN/BiOCl nanofibers and were 2.27 and 2.01 times higher than PAN/BiOI nanofibers, respectively. The high photocatalytic performance could be attributed to the effective interfacial charge separation of BiOCl/BiOI heterojunctions, confirmed by the enhanced photocurrent densities, and significantly decreased photoluminescence intensity. The photocatalytic activity of these composite nanofibers could be further improved by adjusting the contents of BiOCl and BiOI in the heterojunction due to the excellent controllability of the SILAR method. Furthermore, the PAN/BiOCl/BiOI nanofibers can float easily and directly reused due to their flexible and self-supporting fiber mats structures. It was expected that the PAN/BiOCl/BiOI nanofibers with high photocatalytic activity and easily separable properties would be useful for industrial wastewater remediation.

Highlights

  • BiOI/BiOCl heterojunctions were evenly grown on PAN nanofibers at room temperature.

  • The nanofibers show high degradation rates for Rhodamine-B and Bisphenol-A.

  • They can be used for floating photocatalysis due to the flexible and self-supporting properties.

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Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely acknowledge Dr. Hancheng Zhu for supporting the characterization of samples. This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52072064, 51972051, 61803080, 51732003), the 111 Project (No. B13013).

Supporting information

The SEM images of PAN nanofibers and BiOCl/BiOI nanoparticles, SEM images, EDX spectra, and XRD of PAN/BiOCl/BiOI15, PAN/BiOCl/BiOI20, and PAN/BiOCl/BiOI25 nanofibers, and nitrogen sorption isotherms, and UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectra of PAN/BiOCl, PAN/BiOI and PAN/BiOCl/BiOI nanofibers, degradation of RhB in the presence of scavengers,

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Shu Yang, Lei Zhang

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Advanced Optoelectronic Functional Materials Research, Key Laboratory of UV-Emitting Materials and Technology (Northeast Normal University), Ministry of Education, 5268 Renmin Street, Changchun, 130024, PR China

    Shu Yang, Lei Zhang, Changlu Shao, Xinghua Li, Xiaowei Li, Shuai Liu, Ran Tao & Yichun Liu

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  1. Shu Yang
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Correspondence to Changlu Shao or Xinghua Li.

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Yang, S., Zhang, L., Shao, C. et al. Facile preparation of flexible polyacrylonitrile/BiOCl/BiOI nanofibers via SILAR method for effective floating photocatalysis. J Sol-Gel Sci Technol 97, 610–621 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10971-020-05453-2

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