Hydrothermal synthesis and photocatalytic activities of La-doped BiVO4 microcakes

Novel La-doped BiVO4 microcakes have been hydrothermally synthesized and characterized by XRD, XPS, SEM, and DRS techniques. The results reveal that the well crystallized and cake-like Bi0.95La0.05VO4 monoclinic crystal with the diameter range of 1-5 mu m and the width range of 0.2-0.8 mu m can be obtained via a template-free hydrothermal route. Compared with pure BiVO4 microcakes, Bi0.95La0.05VO4 microcake shows a little red shift in the absorption band, resulting in a narrowed band gap (2.37 eV), which has the better photocatalytic activity with a 98.6 % degradation of methylene blue (MB) with a concentration of 10 mg/L under visible-light irradiation for 60 min.