Fabrication Of BiOCl/PAN Composite Nanofibers And Their Photocatalytic Properties

Water pollution has been a very serious problem, which is harmful to humanhealth and leaving creatures. Photocatalytic degradation of organic compounds inaquatic environment by semiconductor materials has received extensive attention dueto its low cost, simplicity and high efficiency as well as no secondary pollution.Recently, bismuth oxychloride (BiOCl) is regarded as a promising semiconductormaterial because of their special properties. However, nanostructured BiOCl asphotocatalysts present some problems in the separation and recycling process for thesuspended nanoparticles, which may increase their property of reuse. In order to solvethese problems, we design to immobilize BiOCl on supports. Electrospunpolyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers might be promising supports for immobilizationof BiOCl due to their one-dimensional nanostructure, macroscopical mats structure,high surface area to volume ratio, flexible property, fine stability and goodelectrospinnability. One-dimensional BiOCl/PAN composite nanofibers which arecomposed of BiOCl nanosheets on electrospun PAN nanofibers were fabricated bycombining electrospinning technique and solvothermal method.In our work, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy,X-ray diffraction, UV-vis diffuse reflectance, Fourier transform infrared spectrum,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric and differential thermalanalysis, were used to characterize the as-fabricated BiOCl/PAN compositenanofibers. The results revealed that BiOCl nanosheets were successfullyimmobilized on electrospun PAN nanofibers. The contents of the BiOCl nanosheetswere controlled by adjusting the precursor concentrations for the fabrication ofBiOCl/PAN composite nanofibers during the solvothermal synthesis processes. It wasfound that some interactions might exist between BiOCl and PAN molecules of theBiOCl/PAN composite nanofibers.The obtained BiOCl/PAN composite nanofibers exhibited high photocatalyticactivity for the degradation of rhodamine B under ultraviolet light irradiation. Thetrapping experiments confirmed that the main active species for photocatalysis washydroxyl radicals, which was produced by both the oxidative pathway and reductivepathway.Notably, the BiOCl/PAN composite nanofibers photocatalysts not only hadgood reusable property because of their one-dimensional structure and flexibility but also retained high photocatalytic stabilities after several cycles due to the interactionbetween BiOCl and PAN molecules.