Photocatalytic microfluidic reactor with a novel compound catalyst film using solar energy

This paper reports a microfluidic reactor (dimensions 10 x 10 x 0.1 mm 3) that utilizes a novel BiVO4/TiO2 heterojmiction film to enhance the photocatalytic perfoimance under solar iiracliation. The microreactor inherits many merits from the micro fluidic s such as fine flow control and large surface-area-to-volume ratio. More importantly, it tackles two fundamental problems of photocatalysis: limited utilization of solar spectrum and severe recombination of photo-excited electrons and holes. These are achieved by using the BiVO4 film to absorb the visible range of solar light and the TiO2 part to absorb the near UV range, and by using the heteroj miction to separate the photo-excited electrons and holes. In experiment, the microreactor using BiVO4/TiO2 shows a reaction rate about 2 times of that using the commercial P25 TiO2 film.