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Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science & Technology of China, Hefei, P.R. China
E-mail: yxie@ustc.edu.cn
; Fax: +86 551 3606266
; Tel: +86 551 3603987
b
National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, P.R. China
E-mail: sqwei@ustc.edu.cn
; Fax: +86 551 5141078
; Tel: +86 551 3601997
Nanoscale, 2012,4, 3761-3767
DOI:
10.1039/C2NR30371J
Received
16 Feb 2012,
Accepted
01 May 2012
First published online
03 May 2012
Photocatalytic purification of polluted water is a very promising way to alleviate the increasingly serious water resources crisis. Despite tremendous efforts, developing visible-light-driven photocatalysts with high activity at low cost still remains a great challenge. Herein, we report for the first time the design and synthesis of ordered m-BiVO4 quantum tubes–graphene nanocomposites that exhibit unprecedented visible-light-driven photocatalytic activities, over 20 times faster than that of commercial P25 or bulk BiVO4 and roughly 1.5 times more active than that of bare m-BiVO4 quantum tubes. Notably, the unusual photoreactivities arise from the synergistic effects between the microscopic crystal structure of m-BiVO4 and macroscopic morphological features of ordered m-BiVO4 quantum tubes and two-dimensional graphene sheets. These structural features help to provide increased photocatalytic reaction sites, extended photoresponding range, enhanced charge transportation and separation efficiency simultaneously. Briefly, this work not only provides a simple and straightforward strategy for fabricating highly efficient and stable graphene-based nanocomposites, but also proves that these unique structures are excellent platforms for significantly improving their visible-light-driven photoactivities, holding great promise for their applications in the field of purifying polluted water resources.
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