LAUSR

Abstract From the viewpoint of practical application, the development of photocatalyst having strong light harvesting and effective charge separation as well as using abundant natural mineral as photocatalyst substrate would be very promising. In this work, a novel Ag loaded Bi2O3/montmorillonite nanocomposite has been successfully prepared by a facile thermal and impregnation methods for the first time to study its photocatalytic performance for aqueous pollutant decomposition under the visible light irradiation. Interestingly, the Ag loaded Bi2O3/montmorillonite nanocomposite presented excellent visible light induced photocatalytic activities for tetracycline (TC) antibiotic and RhB degradation, which is much superior over those of solely Bi2O3, montmorillonite and the corresponding composite. The superiority photocatalytic performance of Ag loaded Bi2O3/montmorillonite nanocomposite over other samples should be due to the improved visible light absorption, enlarged specific surface area and enhanced charge separation. In addition, the effect of different factors such as dosage of composite, pollutants concentration and pH of the pollutant solution on the photocatalytic activity of the composite was inspected. Finally, the possible photocatalytic mechanism of Ag loaded Bi2O3/montmorillonite nanocomposite towards pollutants was proposed in detail based on the trapping experiment and ESR test. The as-developed composite provides a new high efficiency of photocatalyst for potential applications in refinement antibiotic pollutants from wastewater.