Two polyoxovanadates for visible light driven photocatalytic performance

The synthesis of novel polyoxovanadates (POVs) has received considerable critical attention. Herein, two new POVs, {V12P8} (1) and {V16P8} (2), have been designed and synthesized based on phenylphosphonic acid (PhPO3H2) under solvothermal conditions. The structure of 2 is a 16-nuclearity POV composed of four rare zigzag {V4} secondary building units (SBUs). To the best of our knowledge, 2 is the first POV synthesized with PhPO3H2 including this zigzag SBU, which is also very rare among all POVs. Moreover, 2 is the highest-nuclearity isopolyoxovanadate (IPOV) synthesized using PhPO3H2 as the only organic ligand so far. The photocatalytic properties of 1 and 2 were studied under visible light. Both 1 and 2 demonstrate good performance in photocatalytic oxidation of 1,5-dihydroxynaphthalene (1,5-DHN). Compound 1 also has a photocatalytic effect on MB degradation, with 87% of MB degradation within 8 minutes. The synthesis of the highest-nuclearity IPOV using PhPO3 as the only organic ligand.