Controllable synthesis of Ag@TiO2 heterostructures with enhanced photocatalytic activities under UV and visible excitation

Fanli Zhang; Zhiqiang Cheng; Liying Cui; Tingting Duan; Ahmed Anan; Chunfeng Zhang; Lijuan Kang

doi:10.1039/C5RA17762F

Controllable synthesis of Ag@TiO₂ heterostructures with enhanced photocatalytic activities under UV and visible excitation†

Fanli Zhang,^a Zhiqiang Cheng,*^ab Liying Cui,^a Tingting Duan,^a Ahmed Anan,^a Chunfeng Zhang^c and Lijuan Kang*^a

* Corresponding authors

^a College of Resources and Environment, Jilin Agriculture University, Changchun 130118, People's Republic of China
E-mail: czq5974@163.com, kanglijuan61@126.com

^b School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

^c State grid jilin electric power compnay limited electric power research institute, China

Abstract

The heterostructure of Ag doped-TiO₂ has been fabricated through the facile synthesis of electrospinning technique and hydrothermal reaction. During the hydrothermal process, the concentrations of reactants play a significant role in controlling the size and load of Ag NPs on the surface of the TiO₂ fibers. After that, the nanoheterostructures of Ag@TiO₂ were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Simultaneously, diffuse reflectance was used to investigate the visible light adsorption ability. Surface modification by Ag rendered visible light-induced photocatalytic activity to the TiO₂ fibers. Rhodamine B (RhB) was employed as a representative dye pollutant to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of the Ag/TiO₂ samples. The results indicated that the heterojunction structure of Ag/TiO₂ exhibited higher degradation efficiency than the pure TiO₂ fibers. Furthermore, we also investigated the photocatalytic performance under visible-light, which exhibited a significant increase in degradation efficiency. Additionally, the proposed mechanism for the enhanced photocatalytic activity of TiO₂ fibers by deposited-Ag particles was proposed.

Supplementary files

Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C5RA17762F
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 01 Sep 2015
Accepted: 28 Nov 2015
First published: 01 Dec 2015

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RSC Adv., 2016,6, 1844-1850

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Controllable synthesis of Ag@TiO₂ heterostructures with enhanced photocatalytic activities under UV and visible excitation

F. Zhang, Z. Cheng, L. Cui, T. Duan, A. Anan, C. Zhang and L. Kang, RSC Adv., 2016, 6, 1844 DOI: 10.1039/C5RA17762F

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