title: Highly efficient visible-light-driven photocatalytic activities in synthetic ordered monoclinic BiVO4 quantum tubes-graphene nanocomposites.
abstract: 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-BiVO(4) quantum tubes-graphene nanocomposites that exhibit unprecedented visible-light-driven photocatalytic activities, over 20 times faster than that of commercial P25 or bulk BiVO(4) and roughly 1.5 times more active than that of bare m-BiVO(4) quantum tubes. Notably, the unusual photoreactivities arise from the synergistic effects between the microscopic crystal structure of m-BiVO(4) and macroscopic morphological features of ordered m-BiVO(4) 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.
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science & Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Yongfu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Bingyan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.forename: Qin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Shan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Zixian
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Wensheng
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Bicai
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.forename: Shiqiang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xie