Synthesis and Characterization of Novel BiVO4/Ag3VO4 Heterojunction with Enhanced Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Degradation of Dyes

Development of efficient photocatalysts for environmental remediation under visible light conditions has obtained much attention in recent years. In this study, the novel BiVO4/Ag3VO4 heterojunction has been successfully fabricated via a hydrothermal process and a facile precipitation reaction. The organic dye Rhodamine B (RhB) was chosen to explore the photocatalytic performance, and it was found that the synthetic sample at 10:1 mol ratio of BiVO4:Ag3VO4 had the highest photocatalytic activity among all the photocatalysts. The RhB was completely degraded (95.9%) under visible light irradiation in 20 min, which was 10 times and 3.4 times higher than those of pristine BiVO4 and Ag3VO4, respectively. Furthermore, the A/10B sample also showed superior degradation activity on the other organic dyes such as methyl blue (MB), methyl red (MR), and methyl violet (MV). It is assumed that the enhanced photocatalytic property could be ascribed to the heterojunction, leading to an effective separation of the photogenerated charges carriers. The responsible photocatalytic mechanism is discussed based on the active species trapping experiments and ESR, and it was found that h+ and •OH are for the photocatalytic process.