Yttrium Doped Bismuth Vanadium Oxide for Visible Light Driven Hydrogen Production and Dye Degradation /

Abstract

Fossil energy sources are continuously depleting and causing damage to the environment. The use of renewable energy options should be used to meet current and potential energy needs and to generate clean energy. Solar seems to be an attractive clean alternative energy source among renewable resources that can help increase our energy independence and reduce the implications of global warming. However solar suffers fluctuations so that need to be coupled with energy storage technologies. Energy storage in chemical bonds is most feasible and economical for solar energy storage, one of the attractive way to store electricity is to convert into storage fuels, such as hydrogen. Hydrogen production through water splitting is most used method but this is expensive, PEC waters splitting is cheapest way to produce hydrogen. Photo anode is one of the most important component of Photo-electrochemical water splitting. Bismuth vanadate is a promising photo catalyst for hydrogen production by splitting water molecules. Bismuth vanadate is also important photo catalyst for decolorizing the textile waste water. Dyes with bright color as reactive and acidic dyes are soluble in water and hard to remove, the removal of such color dyes from waste water is a difficult and complex task. Wastewater in the presence of dyes is a source for eutrophication and an unsightly contamination which can deliver by items through oxidation, hydrolysis or any other additional chemical process occurring in wastewater which are dangerous to both health and environment. Bismuth vanadate’s photocatalytic performance is strongly influenced by high energy surface states i.e., unsaturated Bi atoms in structural framework and broken Bi-O bonds. The presence of these states makes photoactive materials susceptible to high charge-carriers recombination and poor in charge transport characteristics. To address this issue, in this work we doped Y+3 atoms to substitute Bi+3 in Bi25VO40 to modify surface states. Bi25VO40 nano-grains had distinct emission peak cantered at 460 nm according to the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum. The photocatalytic activity of Y0.03-Bi25VO40 increased up to 1.6 folds as compared to pristine bismuth vanadium oxide for the degradation of aqueous methylene blue (MB) while photocurrent response in comparison to the pristine material was enhanced.