LAUSR

Abstract The conversion of atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3) under mild conditions is quite challenging due to high stability of the triple covalent bond. Here we report that Bi-decorated BiOBr microspheres with plentiful oxygen vacancies (OVs) were successfully fabricated by one-step solvothermal strategy and used as effective photocatalysts for nitrogen fixation. The metallic Bi was reduced in-situ by glycerol and deposited on the surface of BiOBr microspheres. The synchronously generated OVs can serve as the activation center for nitrogen. Compared to pure BiOBr, Bi@BiOBr hetero-structured microspheres have higher specific surface area, superior visible-light utilization, more effective separation of photoexcited charge carriers, thus exhibiting more pronounced visible light photocatalytic N2 fixation performance. Specifically, the N2 reduction rate of the Bi@BiOBr-2 is 1350 μmol g−1 h−1, which is 11.8 times higher than pure BiOBr (114 μmol g−1 h−1). This study provides a simple and low energy consumption method for effective and stable photocatalytic N2 fixation.