%L publicatio16969 %N 51 %D 2018 %X In the recent past, there has been a large-scale utilization of plant extracts for the synthesis of various photocatalysts. The biofabrication technology eliminates the usage of harmful chemicals and serves as an eco-friendly approach for environmental remediation. Herein, a comparative analysis between bismuth oxyiodide synthesized via Azadirachta indica (neem) leaf extract (BiOI-G) and without leaf extract (BiOI-C) has been envisaged. The BiOI-G and BiOI-C samples were characterized by spectral and microscopic techniques, which revealed that the Azadirachta indica assisted BiOI-G attained enhanced features over BiOI-C such as narrower band gap, large surface area, porosity, increased absorption range of visible light and effectual splitting of the photogenerated e(-)-h(+) pairs. Benefiting from these enhanced features, BiOI-G degraded methyl orange (MO), rhodamine B (RhB), and benzotriazole (BT) at a significantly higher rate in comparison to BiOI-C. The degradation rate of MO, RhB and BT by BiOI-G was observed to be 1.3, 1.25 and 1.29 times higher in comparison to BiOI-C. Moreover, BiOI-G displayed high stability upto five cycles of the photocatalytic activity, which endow its effectiveness as a highly-efficient green photocatalyst. %V 8 %J RSC ADVANCES %R MTMT:3403536 10.1039/C8RA05661G %I szte %P 29022-29030 %A Seema Garg %A Mohit Yadav %A Amrish Chandra %A Sameer Sapra %A Soniya Gahlawat %A Pap Zsolt %A HernĂĄdi KlĂĄra %A Ingole Pravin P. %T Biofabricated BiOI with enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible light irradiation