In-situ formation of Bi-O-C bonds on BiOCl/azo-porous organic polymers heterostructure for enhanced visible light-driven photocatalytic activity

Abstract

Porous organic polymers (POPs) are highly effective in wastewater decontamination owing to enhanced light-harvesting, abundant active sites, and tunable band structures. In this study, a novel heterojunction was designed and constructed by coupling oxygen vacancy BiOCl and azo-porous organic polymers (A-POP) through an in-situ solvothermal reaction. The characterization results revealed that the Bi-O-C bonds at the interface of BiOCl/A-POP heterojunction promoted the reinforcement of the built-in electric field and increased oxygen vacancies, thereby improving the interface migration of photogenerated carriers and photocatalytic performance. The BiOCl/A-POP composites exhibited enhanced photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB), achieving a maximum degradation of 90 % within 20 min under visible light. In addition, the probable photodegradation pathways and mechanisms were proposed based on experiments and density functional theory calculations. This study offers a new approach to developing heterostructured photocatalysts through inorganic/organic coupling to eliminate pollutants from wastewater.