Synthesis and phase transfer of well-defined BiVO4 nanocrystals for photocatalytic water splitting

A method to synthesize BiVO4 nanoparticles and nanorods hydrothermally using sodium oleate as a capping ligand is presented. The BiVO4 nanocrystals possessed the expected blue shift in absorbance relative to bulk that occurs with scaling of particle size. Next, we transferred the BiVO4 nanoparticles from organic solvents to water using two different ligands. These particles were tested as water oxidation and dye reduction catalysts.