Facile Insights into Hydrothermal Synthesis of Ultrathin Bi 4 NbO 8 Cl Nanosheets for Efficient CO 2 Photoreduction.

Developing novel two-dimensional photocatalysis is an excellent strategy for high-efficiency CO 2 photoreduction. Herein, for the first time, we demonstrate a facile hydrothermal synthesis method to construct ultrathin Bi 4 NbO 8 Cl nanosheets using tartaric acid as a complexing agent, which can restrain the speed of nucleation. The ultrathin Bi 4 NbO 8 Cl nanosheets exhibit excellent catalytic activity of CO and CH 4 production (10.84 and 4.45 μmol g -1 h -1 ), which are up to 1.9 and 1.4 times higher than those of the bulk Bi 4 NbO 8 Cl, respectively. Photoelectric experiments and mechanism analysis systematically show that the as-obtained enhanced performance should be attributed to the formation of ultrathin Bi 4 NbO 8 Cl nanosheets, and charge separation and migration are significantly boosted. Therefore, this ultrathin Bi 4 NbO 8 Cl structure has provided new insights into the controllable preparation of ultrathin nanosheet photocatalysts to effectively improve the catalytic performance.