Flux-assisted synthesis of bismuth nanoparticle decorated carbon nitride for efficient photocatalytic degradation of endocrine disrupting compound.

Traditional approaches to synthesizing bismuth nanoparticle decorated carbon nitride (C 3 N 4 ) materials suffer from the complex synthesis process and the addition of a surfactant, which is not conducive to environmental protection. To address these problems, we adopted a simple and green flux-assisted approach for the first time to fabricate metallic bismuth nanoparticle decorated C 3 N 4 (BiCCN). Electron microscopy results suggested that bismuth vanadate was converted into small bismuth nanoparticles via the flux-assisted approach. Highly dispersed Bi nanoparticles dramatically intensify light absorption, facilitate spatial charge separation as electron acceptors, shorten the charge diffusion length, and reserve more active sites for generating reactive species via surface photo-redox reactions. Consequently, the derived optimized photocatalyst BiCCN-15 rendered around 26 times higher photocatalytic degradation efficiency toward an endocrine disrupting compound (bisphenol A) than C 3 N 4 . This work provides a novel approach for developing non-precious metal decorated photocatalytic materials for sustainable water decontamination.