Easy conversion of BiOCl plates to flowers like structure to enhance the photocatalytic degradation of endocrine disrupting compounds

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are exogenous agents that interfere with the synthesis, secretion, transport, binding action and elimination of the natural hormones in our body. Bisphenol A (BPA), one of the well-known emerging pollutants, is widely used as an industrial ingredient in polycarbonate plastic products. BPA can be released into aquatic environments through domestic and industrial wastewater discharge. Development of cost-effective technologies for the removal of BPA is currently a priority R&D area. BiOCl microstructures materials were successfully prepared via a hydrothermal method and evaluated for the photocatalytic degradation of Bisphenol A via under UV-B light. The prepared BiOCl microstructures were characterised using XRD, DRSUV-vis, SEM, EDS and XPS analyses. SEM results demonstrated that the morphology of these BiOCl nanostructured materials could easily be modified from microplates to microflowers by altering the solution stirring speed during synthesis. XRD analysis showed that the product could be indexed to the tetragonal phase of BiOCl. The band gap energies determined by DRUV-vis were estimated to be 3.36 eV and 3.32 eV for microflowers and microplates respectively. EDS analysis confirmed the presence of three elements bismuth, oxygen and chlorine in the BiOCl. The microflowers exhibited enhanced photocatalytic performance because of the higher adsorption capacity and presence of more active sites compared to BiOCl microplates.