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Tong Gao, Zhi Chen, Qiaoli Huang, Feng Niu, Xiani Huang, Laishun Qin
and Yuexiang Huang
College of Materials Science and Engineering, China Jiliang University, No. 258 Xueyuan Street,
Xiasha Higher Education District, Hangzhou 310018, Zhejiang Province, P.R. China
Received: April 11, 2014
Abstract. Photocatalyses such as hydrogen generation from water splitting or degrading or-
ganic contaminant on photocatalysts under solar light is promising in solving current energy and
environmental issues. Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) is a newly emerging photocatalytic material in
parallel with the widely used TiO2-based materials, and the narrow band gap (2.1-2.7 eV) of
BiFeO3-based materials (BFO) makes the visible-light photocatalysis such as hydrogen genera-
tion by water splitting become possible. In this review, BFO with different particle sizes and
morphologies prepared by various preparation methods such as sol-gel, hydrothermal and
microwave hydrothermal was summarized and the effects of particle size and/or morphology on
the photocatalytic activity were discussed. The effects of the addition of dopants and formation of
hetero-junction on the BFO photocatalytic activity were also evaluated. The examples of H2 pro-
duction and degradation of organic pollutants by using BFO as the photocatalysts were given in
the end and the future work about the photocatalyses of BFO material is also suggested.
p) (,5Tf
Q SUTGd
eTi7U d
Ub7 %
@dT%
98 T. Gao, Z. Chen, Q. Huang, F. Niu, X. Huang, L. Qin and Y. Huang
cal stability and easy availability [7]. The principle duction; however, it is still a big challenge for both
of photocatalytic water splitting to generate hydro- academic research and industrial application.
gen on a semiconductor photocatalyst is schemati- Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3-type material) is a widely-
cally illustrated in Fig. 1 [8-10]. Incident light ex- known multiferroic material with simultaneously
cites the intrinsic ionization over the band gap of n- magnetic and electric ordering. Recently, bismuth
type semiconducting material, which leads to the ferrite has attracted a great of interests for solar
formation of electrons and holes in the semicon- applications due to its narrow band gap and the bulk
ductor, Eq. (1). The holes split water molecules into photovoltaic effect [11,12]. Comparing with TiO2-
O2 and H+, Eq. (2). Simultaneously, the electrons based photocatalysts, BiFeO3 has a narrower band
generated in Eq. (1) reduce the H+ into H2. The effi- gap of 2.1-2.7 eV, which allows the photocatalytic
ciency of water splitting is generally determined by activity under visible light to become prominent. This
the band gap, band structure and the electron trans- is particularly important because visible-light energy
ferring process. occupies about 48% of the total solar energy; while
- +
UV light which is effective for TiO 2 -based
2hv 2 e + 2hole , (1)
photocatalysts only accounts for ca. 4% [12]. Bulk
+ +
photovoltaic effect existing in materials without a
2 hole + H2 O(liquid) 1/ 2 O 2 (Gas) + 2 H , (2) center of symmetry such as ferroelectric materials
has many unique features such as charge-carrier
+ -
2H + 2 e H2 (gas). (3) separation in a homogeneous medium, large
Considering the potential of water splitting, the photovoltage and a photocurrent proportional to the
lowest energy of the absorbed photon must be larger polarization magnitude [11-17]. The depolarization
than 1.23 eV to trigger this reaction. In view of the of electric field existing in BiFeO3-based materials
energy requirements set by H2O reduction and oxi- may reduce the recombination of the photogenerated
dation potentials of the conduction band and valence charged carriers during the transmission process
band levels, the optimum band gap of semiconduc- [13-18]; which can further increase the quantum ef-
tor for efficient hydrogen production is about 2.0 eV. ficiency. Therefore, BiFeO3-based material can serve
The photo-efficiency of water splitting on TiO2-based as a promising photocatalyst either for hydrogen
photocatalyst is greatly limited due to its large band generation from water splitting or for degradation of
gap (~3.2 eV) which restricts the absorption of vis- organic pollutants in the future.
ible light. This results in low quantum efficiency of In the present review, different methods for the
hydrogen generation when these photocatalysts are syntheses of BFO (BiFeO3-type materials) with di-
used to split water under the visible light irradiation. verse morphologies such as nanoparticles [19],
Therefore, developing a new photocatalytic material nanofibers [20], microcubes [21] and porous thin
that can directly split water into hydrogen under vis- films [22] are summarized. The influence of mor-
ible-light irradiation is essential for hydrogen pro- phology on the BFO photocatalytic activity is evalu-
A review: preparation of bismuth ferrite nanoparticles and its applications in visible-light induced... 99
Table 1. The influences of the processing parameters on the formation of BiFeO3 powders, see [37], (re-
printed with permission from J.H. Peng, M. Hojamberdiev, B.W. Cao, J.A. Wang, Y.H. Xu // Applied Phys-
ics a-Materials Science & Processing. 103 (2011) 511, (c) 2011 Elsevier).
Fig. 5. SEM micrograph of BiFeO3 powders synthesized at 200 o C for 4 h using different KOH concentra-
tions: 4 M (a), 6 M (b) and (c) 7 M; (d) the phase transition of BiFeO3 prepared by hydrothermal method,
reprinted with permission from J.P. Zhou, R.L. Yang, R.J. Xiao, X.M. Chen, C.Y. Deng // Mater. Res. Bull. 47
(2012) 3630, (c) 2012 Elsevier.
glomerations to regular cubes (about 20 mm size nol as the solvent and nano-spherical particles of
with smooth surfaces) when KOH concentration was ~20 nm size are also observed on the flower petal.
increased from 4 M to 7 M, as shown in Fig. 5. The Such differences in morphology, size and agglom-
formation of different morphologies was explained eration are ascribed to the consequence that the
by the electric charge effect (the growth of polyhe- presence of dispersant, mineralizer and solvent
dral particles along different directions with different would affect the BFO formation kinetics during hy-
rates due to the specific surface energy can be af- drothermal process.
fected by the concentration of KOH) on the surfaces BFO particles with diverse morphologies such
of BiFeO3 particles. Fig. 5d demonstrates the pro- as irregular particles [40], wafer-like particles [38],
posed crystal structure transition of BiFeO3 cubic nanowires [41,42], tubes [43,44], spheres, cubes
micro-particles. Jiang et al. investigated the influ- [21,45] could be obtained by the hydrothermal pro-
ence of dispersant, mineralizer and solvent on the cess. It seems that the grain size and morphology
morphology, particle size and agglomeration of of BiFeO3 can be better controlled by this process-
BiFeO3 prepared by a hydrothermal route [39]. In ing, though the reported particle size is larger than
their work, wafer-like BiFeO3 particles with an aver- those prepared by the sol-gel method.
age diameter of 100-500 nm could be obtained by a
hydrothermal process without dispersant or miner- 2.3. Microwave hydrothermal method
alizer. However, the morphology of the as-prepared
BFO particles is different when dispersant or miner- Microwave hydrothermal method is another promis-
alizer was added. As shown in their report, well- ing technique which introduces microwave heating
dispersed BFO microsphere with the uniform diam- into the hydrothermal process. It allows the reac-
eter of about 50 m could be synthesized by using tion system to be rapidly heated to the crystalliza-
PEG 200 as dispersant which is constituted by a tion temperature (about 1-2 orders of magnitude
sheet of porous spherical. As for preparation by using comparing with the conventional hydrothermal pro-
KNO3 as a mineralizer, the obtained BFO particles cess), and thus can greatly reduce the reaction time.
are spindle-like agglomeration with an average di- This is particularly important when production effi-
ameter of ~2 m. However, very beautiful flower-like ciency and composition homogeneity have to be
shape BFO could be synthesized by employing etha- taken into account [46,47].
102 T. Gao, Z. Chen, Q. Huang, F. Niu, X. Huang, L. Qin and Y. Huang
Recently, microwave hydrothermal method has perature was below 180 o C. The particles were in a
been introduced to synthesize perovskite bismuth porous cube-like shape when the reaction tempera-
ferrite nanomaterials. Komarneni et al. first reported ture was increased to 180 o C, as shown in Figs. 6c
the synthesis of highly crystalline BiFeO3 at 194 o C and 6d. Mussel-like particles began to form when
using the microwave hydrothermal process [48]. the reaction was increased to 190 o C (Fig. 6e). When
However, the as-prepared BFO materials were found the temperature was further increased to 200 o C,
to be heavily aggregated. Joshi et al. obtained single- only mussel-like particles were observed since the
crystalline BiFeO3 nanocubes with a size of 50-200 dissolve-recrystallization process was believed to
nm by heating at 180 o C for 30 min under micro- be predominant (Fig. 6f). Zhu et al. synthesized two
wave hydrothermal process [45]. Particle agglom- types of bismuth ferrite by using Fe(NO3)3s 0 2O and
eration was also observed in the acquired products. Bi(NO3)3s , 2O as original materials. One was spheri-
Tan et al. reported that pure-phase BiFeO3, pure- cal perovskite-type bismuth ferric nanocrystals with
phase Bi25FeO40 and the mixture of Bi25FeO40 and diameters of 10-50 nm, as shown in Fig. 7a; and
BiFeO3 could be prepared through a microwave hy- the other was hexagonal-shaped sillenite-type bis-
drothermal method by tuning the temperature and muth ferritic nanocrystals with sizes of 18-33 nm,
KOH concentration [46]. The three kinds of BFO as shown in Fig. 7b [47]. The results of Rh B
materials (BiFeO 3, Bi 25FeO 40, and mixture of (C28H31ClN2O3) photodegradation indicated that the
Bi25FeO40 and BiFeO3) demonstrated different mor- sillenite-type bismuth ferritic nanocrystals with a
phology, crystallinity, specific surface areas and hexagonal shape and size of 18-33 nm showed a
accordingly distinct differences in photocatalytic higher photocatalytic activity than the spherical
activity. The influence of temperature on the mor- perovskite-type BiFeO3 nanocrystals. The higher
phology of the BFO materials is illustrated in Fig. 6. photocatalytic activity has been ascribed to the
It is clearly seen that the particles were almost ir- smaller average particle size and the unique hex-
regular (Figs. 6a and 6b) when the reaction tem- agonal morphology of sillenite-type compound.
From the above discussion, it can be concluded
that microwave hydrothermal method is an appro-
priate route to obtain homogeneous nanosized bis-
muth ferric in a short time.
catalyst [64]. Some researchers [65,66] were also face energy levels of the conduction and valence
involved in using BFO materials to generate hydro- bands from different crystal facets. Zhang et al. also
gen through water splitting from a photocatalytic or reported that the photocatalytic properties of bis-
photoelectrochemical (PEC) process, though the muth ferrite nanoparticles in the UV and visible light
mechanism is still not well understood. range largely depended on the morphology of the
It is recognized that many factors may have in- crystals, and the sequence of catalytic activity un-
fluences on the photocatalytic efficiency of a given der the visible light was cube > plate > sheet [74].
material. For instance, the particle size, morphol- Wang et al prepared BiFeO3 nanoparticles by using
ogy as well as dopants could significantly affect a sol-gel method and found that the morphology and
hydrogen evolution capability of a certain photocata- surface area had remarkably influence on the pho-
lyst during the photocatalytic process. Some modi- tocatalytic activities under visible light, their report
fications such as doping [67] and sensitization [68] showed that the photocatalytic activity of BiFeO3
are used to enhance the photocatalytic performances nanoparticles were better than the BiFeO3 bulk [33].
of hydrogen production. Zhu et al. reported that the hexagonal-shaped BFO
morphology showed a better photocatalytic activity
3.1. Photocatalytic mechanism of BFO than the spherical perovskite-type BFO [47].
nanoparticles It can be concluded that a BiFeO3 particle with
{100}c dominant cube has preferable photocatalytic
As discussed above, the photocatalytic hydrogen activity prepared by hydrothermal method. If a hex-
generation from water splitting on a semiconductor- agonal-shaped BFO particle which prepared by sol-
type photocatalyst such as TiO2 follows a mecha- gel method has bigger surface area should be
nism illustrated in Fig. 1. The photo-induced elec- showed a better photocatalytic performance.
tron holes split water molecules into O2 and H+;
while hydrogen ions are reduced into H2 by the
3.3. Effect of dopants
photogenerated electrons. It is well known that the
visible-light response and the separation of Introducing dopants into the lattice of photocatalysts
photogenerated electron-hole pair are two key fac- is generally used to adjust the band gap of semi-
tors for the photocatalytic performance under solar conductors. As for BFO material, the band struc-
irradiation. As the above discussions, BFO can have ture can be altered by introducing an intermediate
a better visible-light response since it poses a nar- energy level inside the band gap and/or changing
rower band gap comparing with that of TiO2. More- the band gap itself. In addition to the theoretical
over, BFO may have a high separation efficiency of work, considerable experimental efforts have also
the photogenerated electron and hole due to the been made to alter the band structure of BiFeO3 by
self-polarization field caused by self-polarization in doping. The acquired experiments indicated that the
ferromagnetic materials [69-71]. However, the ac- photocatalytic performance could be significantly
tual mechanism for the separation of photogenerated enhanced by doping. Mukherjeea et al. reported that
electron and hole in ferroelectrics is disputable and rare earth transition metal was an effective dopant
a deeper understanding is essential; although the and that the electronic band structure of BiFeO3 could
research for this field started 30 years ago [54,70- be tuned by the addition of Y (BYFO) or La [75].
72]. The band gap of BFO is expanded with the addition
of Y and increased with the increase of the amount
3.2. Effect of particle morphology of Y. Whereas, the band gap decreased with the
addition of rare earth transition metals such as La
It is known that the photocatalytic performance [76]. Zhang et al. investigated the influence of La
would be largely dependent on the morphology of doping on the crystal structure and the
synthesized particles. Many efforts have been made photoabsorption tests revealed that doping with La
to realize morphology control over obtained BFO had little influence on the optical property [77].
particles for achieving better photocatalytic proper- Mukherjee et al. reported the band gap of the pre-
ties. Fei et al. reported that pills and rods with highly pared BiFeO3 and BYFO nanoparticles varied from
exposed {111}c showed an enhanced visible-light 2.0 to 2.3 eV and the doped BYFO had higher pho-
response in comparison with {100}c dominant cubes tocatalytic properties than those of BiFeO3 [78].
[55]. Different photocatalytic activities from different The dopant can replace metal cations on the
crystal facets were also observed by Cai et al. [73]. original sites which results in the lattice substitu-
Such a difference is attributed to the different sur- tion. However, as for the photocatlytic application,
A review: preparation of bismuth ferrite nanoparticles and its applications in visible-light induced... 105
doping is sometimes regarded as an unsuitable synthesized BFO nanoparticles mixed with a para-
method since the dopant can also serve as a new sitic Fe2O3 phase by using sol-gel method [83]. BFO/
recombination center for photo-generated electrons Fe2O3 composite with an optimal ratio between the
and holes. Anyway, doping can be an effective two phases of BFO and Fe2O3 showed an improved
method if suitable doping elements are selected. photocatalytic activity, which was ascribed to the
formation of a BFO/Fe2O3 hetero-junction. It is obvi-
3.4. Effect of hetero-junction ous that the formation of a hetero-junction is effi-
cient way to enhance the photocatalytic perfor-
The effective separation of photo-generated electrons mance of BFO.
and holes is also essential to improve photocata- In addition to the above factors from
lytic activity of semiconductors. The formation of a photocatalysts, the experimental parameters also
hetero-junction from two kinds of materials is gen- have influences on the photocatalytic activities.
erally believed to be effective on enhancing the pho- Wang et al. found that BiFeO3 nanoparticles could
tocatalytic activity due to the reduced recombina- have a higher photocatalytic activity in the solution
tion rate of photogenerated electrons and electron with a lower pH value [34]. The photocatalytic activ-
holes [79-82]. In the case of BFO materials, Fe2O3 ity could be enhanced by increasing the surface
is sometimes selected to form a hetero-junction with area of the prepared films [22]. Wang et al. reported
BFO. Since both BFO and Fe2O3 can be excited by that H2O2 could enhance the photocatalytic activi-
visible light even they have different photo-absorp- ties of BiFeO3 [33]. Li et al. reported a facile method
tion ranges, the photocatalytic reaction is initiated of preparing reduced graphene (RGO)-BiFeO3
by the absorption of visible-light photons with en- nanocomposite through self-assembly and found that
ergy equal to or higher than the band gap in either the magnetic and optical performances of this
BFO or Fe2O3 semiconductors. This results in the nanocomposite could be enhanced due to the in-
creation of electrons and photogenerated holes in teraction between RGO and BiFeO3 [85].
the valence band (VB) and conduction band (CB),
respectively. According to the band edge position,
the excited electrons in the CB of BFO transfer to
4. PHOTOCATALYTIC APPLICATIONS
the CB of Fe2O3; simultaneously, the holes in the OF BFO PARTICLES
VB of Fe2O3 can move to VB of BFO due to the 4.1. Degradation of organic pollutants
potential difference of the band energy. Therefore, on BFO particles
the recombination of electron and hole can be re-
stricted and the corresponding photocatalytic activ- In recent year, many experiments have shown that
ity is accordingly enhanced. The energy band dia- bismuth ferrite can effectively degrade organic pol-
gram of BFO/Fe2O3 is shown in Fig. 9. Guo et al. lutants. Gao et al. have used ~120 nm BiFeO3
106 T. Gao, Z. Chen, Q. Huang, F. Niu, X. Huang, L. Qin and Y. Huang
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