Exploration of bismuth based perovskite materials for organic dyes removal from waste water

The scourge of water pollution due to organic matter is a well-known fact. In order to address this issue, we employed a highly facile method of solid state reaction for the synthesis of bismuth potassium titanate, Bi0.5K0.5TiO3 (BKT) photocatalyst. Furthermore, the bandgap tailoring of the BKT is performed by photo-reduction of Ag onto the BKT, which results in the formation of hetero-structure junctions at the surface of the BKT. The as-prepared BKT and BKT-Ag photocatalysts are systematically characterized by x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and high resolution transmission electron spectroscopy. Furthermore, the photocatalyst activity of the BKT and BKT-Ag was analyzed against the target organic pollutants by using UV–Vis spectroscopy. Three organic dyes such as methylene blue, eriochrome Black T, and methylene orange (MO) were used as target organic pollutants. The anchoring of Ag for the formation of hetero-structure junctions at the surface of BKT rendered it to be an ideal photo-catalyst with a bandgap reduction from 3.37 to 2.08 eV. Therefore, lowering the bandgap resulted in enhanced photocatalytic activity of the BKT-Ag. Among the three target dyes, BKT-Ag showed remarkable photo-degradation of MO and Erb T by degrading ≥90% of MO and Erb T in 120 min at neutral pH values. It is believed that BKT based photocatalysts can provide a unique platform for the removal of organic pollutants from wastewater.