Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SF5-P020
PREPARATION OF BISMUTH-BASED THIN FILMS FOR
PHOTOCATALYTIC APPLICATIONS.
Ericka Sanchez Angeles 1 , Saul Romero Hernandez 2 , Victor Hugo Castrejon Sanchez 1 , Luis
Escobar Alarcon 2
1 Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Jocotitlán, Ingenieria en Materiales, Mexico. 2 Instituto
Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares (ININ), Departamento de Física, Mexico.
Nowadays, an important problem is pollution of aqueous effluents by dyes from
manufacturing processes. Some of these pollutants could represent a
considerable risk for human health because of its toxicity, carcinogen effects
and other adverse physiological effects. Several works have been carried out in
order to develop photocatalysts actives using visible light, for example, bismuthbased
materials such as oxides and vanadates like Bi 2 O 3 and BiVO 4 . Mixtures of
vanadium and bismuth were obtained in thin film form varying the amount of
bismuth. The films were deposited using a crossed-beam laser ablation
technique. A ns pulsed Nd:YAG laser with emission at the third harmonic (355
nm) working at a repetition rate of 10Hz was used to ablate simultaneously a Bi
and a V target. The samples were characterized with EDS to determine the
chemical composition; the obtained results showed that the Bi content, varies
from 14.8 to 42.5 at.%. Raman spectroscopy revealed the presence of signals
attributed to bismuth vanadate (BiVO 4 ) and bismuth oxide in its β phase
depending on the Bi content. The band gap energy was calculated using the Tauc
model from UV-Vis spectroscopy and values from 2.5 to 2.3 eV were found. The
photocatalytic activity of thin films was evaluated in the photodegradation of the
methylene blue dye using visible light. The results showed that the bismuth
vanadate film exhibits better photocatalytic response than the bismuth oxide
films reaching the maximum degradation of 60%.
Acknowledgment:
CONACYT is thanked for the support through project CB-240998. The ININ is
thanked for the project awarded CB-602
Keywords: Photocatalysis, Thin Films, Laser Ablation
Presenting authors email: ericka_sanchez03@hotmail.com