Enhanced photocatalytic activity of Ba doped BiFeO3 by turning morphologies and band gap

The application of BiFeO3(BFO) in the treatment of environmental water pollution is very important. In this paper, Ba-doped bismuth ferrite series nanomaterials were prepared by sol-gel method. The results of X-ray diffraction show the evolution of the crystal structure by doping of Ba, while it can be seen by scanning electron microscopy that the doping reduces the grain size gradually. The band gap gets narrow after doping with Ba, result in high efficiency for the degradation of methyl orange under visible light irradiation. Furthermore, it is found that the ferromagnetism increases with the increase of Ba doping. Therefore, the BFO-based photocatalyst can be obtained by Ba doping with good performance.