Valence Band Engineering of Layered Bismuth Oxyhalides toward Stable Visible-Light Water Splitting: Madelung Site Potential Analysis

Abstract

A layered oxychloride Bi₄NbO₈Cl is a visible-light responsive catalyst for water splitting, with its remarkable stability ascribed to the highly dispersive O-2p orbitals in the valence band, the origin of which, however, remains unclear. Here, we systematically investigate four series of layered bismuth oxyhalides, BiOX (X = Cl, Br, I), Bi₄NbO₈X (X = Cl, Br), Bi₂GdO₄X (X = Cl, Br), and SrBiO₂X (X = Cl, Br, I), and found that Madelung site potentials of anions capture essential features of the valence band structures of these materials. The oxide anion in fluorite-like blocks (e.g., [Bi₂O₂] slab in Bi₄NbO₈Cl) is responsible for the upward shift of the valence band, and the degree of electrostatic destabilization changes depending on building layers and their stacking sequence. This study suggests that the Madelung analysis enables a prediction and design of the valence band structures of bismuth and other layered oxyhalides and is applicable even to a compound where DFT calculation is difficult to perform.