Facile Insights into Hydrothermal Synthesis of Ultrathin BiNbOCl Nanosheets for Efficient CO Photoreduction.

Developing novel two-dimensional photocatalysis is an excellent strategy for high-efficiency CO photoreduction. Herein, for the first time, we demonstrate a facile hydrothermal synthesis method to construct ultrathin BiNbOCl nanosheets using tartaric acid as a complexing agent, which can restrain the speed of nucleation. The ultrathin BiNbOCl nanosheets exhibit excellent catalytic activity of CO and CH production (10.84 and 4.45 μmol g h), which are up to 1.9 and 1.4 times higher than those of the bulk BiNbOCl, respectively. Photoelectric experiments and mechanism analysis systematically show that the as-obtained enhanced performance should be attributed to the formation of ultrathin BiNbOCl nanosheets, and charge separation and migration are significantly boosted. Therefore, this ultrathin BiNbOCl structure has provided new insights into the controllable preparation of ultrathin nanosheet photocatalysts to effectively improve the catalytic performance.