Abstract

Full spectrum of sunlight photocatalyst is difficult to be realized, because there is no infrared light active photocatalystsavailable. Bismuth tungstatehas just been proved to possess high infrared photocatalytic activity. To utilize the solar light to the utmost extent is the main direction and object of photocatalysis, hydrogen production by water splitting, and solar photo-voltage power generation. Although UV and visible active photocatalysts have been extensively investigated in the past several tens of years, the near-infrared wave band of solar light is still a blank area for photocatalyst, except for the application of upconversion material based hybrid photocatalyst with a narrow infrared light absorption band. Here we report infrared active photocatalytic property of Bi2WO6 nanosheets owing to the oxygen vacancies of the Bi2WO6 nanosheets. The wide spectral range photocatalyst, Bi2WO6-TiO2 nanobelt heterostructures, were obtained by assembling Bi2WO6 nanocrystals on TiO2 nanobelts. The active light band of the novel hybrid photocatalyst with high photocatalytic activity covers full-spectrum solar light including UV, visible and near-infrared ranges.

© 2013 Optical Society of America