Structural and Electrical Studies on ZnO-Based Thin Films by Laser Irradiation

The effects of laser irradiation on the structural and electrical properties of ZnO-based thin films were investigated. The XRD pattern shows that the thin films were highly textured along the c-axis and perpendicular to the surface of the substrate. Raman spectra reveal that Bi2O3 segregates mainly at ZnO-ZnO grain boundaries. After laser irradiation processing, the grain size of the film was reduced significantly, and the intrinsic atomic defects of grain boundaries and Bi element segregated at the grain boundary were interacted frequently and formed the composite defects of acceptor state. The nonlinear coefficient increased to 24.31 and the breakdown voltage reduced to 5.34 V

Synthesis and Characterization of Novel BiVO₄/Ag₃VO₄ Heterojunction with Enhanced Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Degradation of Dyes

Development of efficient photocatalysts for environmental remediation under visible light conditions has obtained much attention in recent years. In this study, the novel BiVO₄/Ag₃VO₄ heterojunction has been successfully fabricated via a hydrothermal process and a facile precipitation reaction. The organic dye Rhodamine B (RhB) was chosen to explore the photocatalytic performance, and it was found that the synthetic sample at 10:1 mol ratio of BiVO₄:Ag₃VO₄ had the highest photocatalytic activity among all the photocatalysts. The RhB was completely degraded (95.9%) under visible light irradiation in 20 min, which was 10 times and 3.4 times higher than those of pristine BiVO₄ and Ag₃VO_4, respectively. Furthermore, the A/10B sample also showed superior degradation activity on the other organic dyes such as methyl blue (MB), methyl red (MR), and methyl violet (MV). It is assumed that the enhanced photocatalytic property could be ascribed to the heterojunction, leading to an effective separation of the photogenerated charges carriers. The responsible photocatalytic mechanism is discussed based on the active species trapping experiments and ESR, and it was found that h⁺ and •OH are for the photocatalytic process