Facile Synthesis of Heterostructured WS₂/Bi₂MoO₆ as High-Performance Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalysts

In this paper, novel WS₂/Bi₂MoO₆ heterostructured photocatalysts were successfully fabricated via a facile solvothermal growth method using pre-exfoliated layered WS₂ nanoslices as a substrate. The structure, morphology, and optical properties of the as-prepared WS₂/Bi₂MoO₆ samples were characterized by XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM (HRTEM), and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS). Results confirmed the existence of an excellent nanojunction interface between layered WS₂ nanoslices and Bi₂MoO₆ nanoflakes. Under visible light (>420 nm), the WS₂/Bi₂MoO₆ composites exhibit significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity compared with pure Bi₂MoO₆ toward the decomposition of rhodamine B (RhB). Meanwhile, the active species trapping experiments indicated that holes (h⁺) were the main active species during the photocatalytic reaction. The enhanced photocatalytic performance can be ascribed to the effective light harvesting, fast photogenerated electron-hole pairs separation, and excellent charge carrier transport of the WS₂/Bi₂MoO₆ heterostructures. Moreover, the prepared WS₂/Bi₂MoO₆ composites also show good structural and activity stability in repeatability experiments.