Enhancement of photocatalytic activity of BiOCl by doping with variable metal Co and related studies on degradation of organic pollutants

A novel BiOCl/Co catalyst was constructed by in situ doping of metal Co nanoparticles on n-type BiOCl nanosheets. The percentage of metal Co incorporated in the photocatalysts was adjusted to improve the degradation performance of the new catalysts against pollutants. The optimized BiOCl/Co achieved up to 95.5% photocatalytic degradation efficiency of rhodamine B (RhB). This might be attributed to the enhanced visible light absorption ability of BiOCl/Co by plasmon resonance (SPR) as well as the effective interfacial separation and transport of carriers in BiOCl/Co. BiOCl/Co showed excellent mineralization capacity and reuse performance in the degradation of RhB. Furthermore, it was shown that photogenerated h⁺, ⋅OH and ⋅O₂⁻ were the major reactive substances for dye degradation. The photodegradation mechanism of RhB by BiOCl/Co was elucidated in this paper.