It is widely studied as visible light photo-catalyst with a narrow band gap of less than 2.4 eV.
In nature, bismuth vanadate can be found as the mineral pucherite, clinobisvanite, and dreyerite depending on the particular polymorph formed.
[4] In the monoclinic phase, BiVO4 is an n-type photoactive semiconductor with a bandgap of 2.4 eV, which has been investigated for water splitting after doping with W and Mo.
[3] BiVO4 photoanodes have demonstrated record solar-to-hydrogen (STH) conversion efficiencies of 5.2% for flat films[5][6] and 8.2% for WO3@BiVO4 core-shell nanorods[7][8][9] (highest for metal-oxide photo-electrode) with the advantage of a very simple and cheap material.
It is also possible to start with the parent oxides (Bi2O3 and V2O5) and perform a high temperature calcination to achieve a pure product.