Enhancement of adsorption and visible light photocatalytic activity of the Zn2+-doped BiOBr/PVP modified microspheres for RhB

The Zn2+-doped BiOBr/PVP modified microspheres were first prepared via a simple solvothermal method. A series of characterization results indicated that both the adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity of the Zn2+-doped BiOBr/PVP modified microspheres for Rhodamine B (RhB) were enhanced under visible light (lambda = 420 nm), and the removal percentage was up to 99.6% within 60 min. Besides, the Zn2+-doped BiOBr/PVP modified microspheres also displayed good stability after three recycles. The improvement of adsorption capacity may be mainly attributed to increasing of the specific surface area by the adding of PVP, and the improvement of photocatalytic performance may be mainly ascribed to lower recombination rate of photo - generated electron-hole pairs (e(-) /h(+)) by the doping of Zn2+. The Zn2+-doped BiOBr/PVP modified microspheres with enhanced adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity may be applied to industrial water treatment field in the future.