Advanced photocatalytic performance of graphene-like BN modified BiOBr flower-like materials for the removal of pollutants and mechanism insight

Novel graphene-like BN modified BiOBr materials have been synthesized via an ionic liquid assisted solvothermal process. The structure, morphology, optical and electronic properties were explored by the XRD, XPS, FT-IR, SEM, TEM, DRS, PL, EIS and photocurrent. The photocatalytic performance of the graphene-like BN/BiOBr materials was evaluated by the degradation of colorless antibiotic agent ciprofloxacin (CIP), tetracycline hydrochloride (TC) and rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light irradiation. When the mass fraction of graphene-like BN is 1%, the graphene-like BN/BiOBr materials exhibited the highest activity. The enhanced light harvesting ability and higher separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs by the modification of graphene-like BN contributed to the higher photocatalytic activity. The photo-degradation is dominant by the O-2(center dot-) and hole oxidation process. This exploration of graphene-like BN modified BiOBr open a window for the use of other graphene-like BN based composites in photocatalysis field. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.