SrTiO₃/TiO₂ heterostructure nanowires with enhanced electron--hole separation for efficient photocatalytic activity

Abstract

Heterostructure is an effective strategy to facilitate the charge carrier separation and promote the photocatalytic performance. In this paper, uniform SrTiO₃ nanocubes were in-situ grown on TiO₂ nanowires to construct heterojunctions. The composites were prepared by a facile alkaline hydrothermal method and an in-situ deposition method. The obtained SrTiO₃/TiO₂ exhibits much better photocatalytic activity than those of pure TiO₂ nanowires and commercial TiO₂ (P25) evaluated by photocatalytic water splitting and decomposition of Rhodamine B (RB). The hydrogen generation rate of SrTiO₃/TiO₂ nanowires could reach 111.26 mmol·g⁻¹·h⁻¹ at room temperature, much better than those of pure TiO₂ nanowires (44.18 mmol·g⁻¹·h⁻¹) and P25 (35.77 mmol·g⁻¹·h⁻¹). The RB decomposition rate of SrTiO₃/TiO₂ is 7.2 times of P25 and 2.4 times of pure TiO₂ nanowires. The photocatalytic activity increases initially and then decreases with the rising content of SrTiO₃, suggesting an optimum SrTiO₃/TiO₂ ratio that can further enhance the catalytic activity. The improved photocatalytic activity of SrTiO₃/TiO₂ is principally attributed to the enhanced charge separation deriving from the SrTiO₃/TiO₂ heterojunction.

Keywords

photocatalytic / SrTiO₃/TiO₂ nanowire / heterostructure / nanocomposite

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51572145).

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