Abstract:
This research studied the effect of molten salt addition on the synthesis of bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) by solid state reaction and coprecipitation-calcination method. Bismuth nitrate pentahydrate and ammonium metavanadate were used as the starting precusors and three types of salts: LiNO3, NaNO3 and LiNO3-NaNO3. The weight ratio of BiVO4 precusors to salts was varied from 1:0 to 1:12 and the effect of synthesis temperature was performed. As the results, it was indicated that adding the salts in both synthesis methods promoted phase transformation to pure monoclinic structure at low temperature when compared nonsalt preparation. The particle size of BiVO4 synthesized by solid state reaction was large in range of hundreds nanometers in which shape and particle distribution were not homogeneous. The growth of particles was due to the increasing of the synthesis temperature. When adding salts with the higher ratio resulted in decreasing the photocatalytic activity under the visiblelight region. BiVO4 synthesized by solid state reaction without adding salts at 400๐C showed the highest photocatalytic activity which was about 39.61%, while shape and size of BiVO4 synthesized by coprecipitation-calcination was homogeneous. Moreover, adding salt and calcination temperature higher than their melting point (around 30-85๐C) contributed good and homogeneous distribution of particle leading to enhanced photocatalytic activity. BiVO4 synthesized by coprecipitation-calcination with adding NaNO3 (1:2) at 340๐C exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity which was 67.01% followed by adding LiNO3 (1:8) at 335๐C, adding LiNO3-NaNO3 (1:4) at 273๐C and nonsalt preparation at 500๐C which were 66.67%, 59.80% and 45.24%, respectively.