Hello Shalini,

this is clearly a very interesting and intricate technical question. Personally I have never done this reaction but I assume that the purpose of adding acetic acid to the reaction mixture could to redissolve small amounts of hydrolysis products of the bismuth nitrate (e.g. BiO(OH)). On the other hand, this is just one protocol for carrying out the synthesis of bismuth vanadate. There are other methods which have been described in the literature where no added acetic acid is needed. In this context, please have a look at the following interesting research article:

Controlling bismuth vanadate morphology and crystalline structure through optimization of microwave-assisted synthesis conditions

Article Controlling Bismuth Vanadate Morphology and Crystalline Stru...

The full text of this paper is freely accessible on RG and can be downloaded as pdf file.

By the way, you can find and access many other relevant literature references when you search the "Publications" section of RG for the term "bismuth vanadate":

https://www.researchgate.net/search.Search.html?type=publication&query=bismuth%20vanadate

I hope you will find this information useful. Good luck with your work and best wishes, Frank Edelmann

thank you, sir Frank T. Edelmann . I certainly will go through the papers to understand more about BiVO4.

This is because BiVO4 is essentially insoluble in water and organic solvents but dissolves in highly alkaline (pH> 13) and acid (pH

Also, see the following link: Article Effects of pH value on the surface morphology of BiVO4 micro...

Kindly, see the following link too: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2013/ta/c2ta00490a

I think the acidic medium is to control the morphology and the crystalline structure. See the following link: Article Controlling Bismuth Vanadate Morphology and Crystalline Stru...

Shalini Kulandaivalu

I think, the mostly used Bi source for synthesizing Bismuth Vanadate is Bismuth Nitrate and it is insoluble in D.I. water. So to make it clear, a homogenous bismuth precursor acidic medium is helpful. I hope this will be helpful for you. Good luck with your research !!

I think acetic acid is used to tune the shape and size of the particle, and in general to get porous structures.@Shalini Kulandaivalu