Hydrothermal synthesis of Ag-doped BiOI nanostructure used for photocatalysis Nuengruethai Ekthammathat 1 • Saisakun Kidarn 2 • Anukorn Phuruangrat 3 • Somchai Thongtem 4,5 • Titipun Thongtem 2 Received: 11 September 2015 / Accepted: 7 December 2015 / Published online: 28 December 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract A series of Ag-doped BiOI photocatalysts with different Ag contents was successfully synthesized by a hydrothermal method at 120 °C for 24 h. The as- synthesized products were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and photoluminescence (PL) spec- troscopy. The photocatalytic activities of the undoped BiOI and Ag-doped BiOI products under UV visible and visible daylight were evaluated through the decol- orization of methyl orange (MO) and methylene blue in aqueous solutions. In this research, 1.0 mol% Ag-doped BiOI microflowers revealed the highest decoloriza- tion efficiency of 91.26 % to degrade MO under visible daylight within 180 min, controlled by the open surface area of the photocatalyst and illumination intensity. Keywords Ag-doped BiOI Á Hydrothermal method Á X-ray diffraction Á Spectroscopy Á Photocatalysis & Nuengruethai Ekthammathat nueng_omam@hotmail.com & Titipun Thongtem ttpthongtem@yahoo.com 1 Program of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology, Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University, Bangkok 10600, Thailand 2 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand 3 Department of Materials Science and Technology, Faculty of Science, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Songkhla 90112, Thailand 4 Department of Physics and Materials Science, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand 5 Materials Science Research Center, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand 123 Res Chem Intermed (2016) 42:5559–5572 DOI 10.1007/s11164-015-2386-6