Hydrothermal synthesis and enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity of octahedral Bi2WO6 modified with CdSe quantum dots

Abstract

In this paper, octahedral Bi₂WO₆ modified with CdSe quantum dots was synthesized by a hydrothermal method. This as-prepared CdSe–Bi₂WO₆ photocatalyst exhibited a higher photocatalytic activity for the degradation of tetracycline (TC) than octahedral Bi₂WO₆. Moreover, 15%-CdSe–85%-Bi₂WO₆ showed the best D_r of 65.38%, which is over 5 times that of the pure Bi₂WO₆. Furthermore, the as-synthesized CdSe–Bi₂WO₆ composite photocatalyst was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis) and photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL).