Facial precipitation fabrication of visible light driven nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots decorated iodine bismuth oxide catalysts

A series of nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots decorated iodine bismuth oxide (BiOI/x%N-GQDs, x = 0,1,3,5,7,9,10) was prepared by a facial precipitation method at room temperature. Several characterizations indicated that 1-9 nm N-GQDs were evenly decorated on the surface of BiOI nanosheets. The visible light driven photocatalytic experiments showed that BiOI/9%N-GQDs possessed an excellent degradation property towards 20 mg/L methyl orange (MO), and its degradation efficiency obtained 93.11%. The results of free radical capture experiments demonstrated that h(+) played a major role during the process of degrading MO. The possible photocatalytic mechanism had been proposed. Besides, BiOI/9%N-GQDs catalyst effectively degraded other organic pollutants, such as rhodamine B (RhB), methylene blue (MB), bisphenol A (BPA), and inorganic pollutant of Cr (VI). The catalytic property of BiOI/9%N-GQDs was better than those of the similar reported systems. The catalytic system of BiOI/9%N-GQDs was predicted to have good prospects in further practical applications.