Recent advances in engineering strategies of Bi-based photocatalysts for environmental remediation

A bismuth-based material serves as an interesting and innovative class of visible-light-driven photocatalysts that have paid a lot of attraction towards exceptional photo-oxidation capacity. The great progress for the decomposition of water oxidation and organic contaminants have been documented with the aid of photocatalytic strategies. At present, the classification of Bi-based photocatalysts can be given as bismuth metal, binary sulfides, multicomponent oxides, bismuth oxyhalides, binary oxides, and so forth. Although Bi provides advanced outcomes for photocatalysts towards energy development and environmental remediation, their productivity still is not at supreme level. Prompting recombination of e--h+ pairs (photogenerated) along with characteristic structural instability has restricted its applied usage. To resolve these issues, some strategies have been tendency to bismuth-rich strategy, elemental doping, facet control, defect engineering, and heterojunction. In this article, we represent a complete outline of their electronic structures, fundamental compositions, and synthesis schemes for numerous bismuth-based photocatalysts. Moreover, a number of environmental applications also have been conferred in detail, for instance degradation of water pollutants, H2-evolution, and CO2 photoreduction, N2-fixation, as well as treatment of atmospheric pollutants. Utilizing the structural-property-activity associations, comprehensive methodologies for improvement of their photocatalytic progress have been discussed, including introduction of oxygen vacancies (Ov), heterojunction construction, bismuth-rich strategy, and morphology/facet control. Finally, a superior understanding for development of Bi-based photocatalysts and realistic design headed for environmental remediation via solar energy harvesting are outlined.