Synergistic effect of surface oxygen vacancies and interfacial charge transfer on Fe(III)/Bi2MoO6 for efficient photocatalysis

A novel Fe(III)/Bi2MoO6 heterostructured nanocomposite with surface oxygen vacancies (denoted as F/BMO-SOVs) was firstly fabricated via a facile calcination process combined with impregnation approach, which exhibited excellent visible-light-driven photocatalytic performances for phenol degradation due to synergistic effect between the SOVs, Fe(III) clusters and BMO. This synergistic effect not only narrows the band gap, improving the visible light absorption ability, but also produces a direct interfacial charge transfer (IFCT) from the SOVs isolated states to the surface Fe(III) clusters, greatly promoting the efficient separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, resulting in the very high photocatalytic performance.