Fabrication of Bi2O2(OH)NO3/g-C3N4 nanocomposites for efficient CO2 photocatalytic reduction

Developing new photocatalysts to improve photocatalytic performance is of great importance for dealing with environmental crisis. In this work, disc-shaped Bi2O2(OH)NO3/g-C3N4 nanosheets (BON-CN) were successfully synthesized by one-step hydrothermal method. Among them, 20wt% BON-CN composite demonstrated much better performance for CO2 photocatalytic reduction, the CO yield on which was about 3.2 and 2 times of the pure CN and BON respectively. This improvement of photocatalytic performance is basically attributed to the formation of tightly bonded structure between the two pure catalysts, which could effectively accelerate the separation of electron-hole pairs and thereby allow more free photocatalytic carriers (e(-) and h(+)) to participate in the redox reaction process. Meanwhile, the possible mechanism was proposed based on the characterization results.