Synthesis of scaly Sn3O?/Tio? nanobelt heterostructures for enhanced UV-visible light photocatalytic activity

By Chen, Guohui; Ji, Shaozheng; Sang, Yuanhua; Chang, Sujie; Wang, Yana; Hao, Pin; Claverie, Jerome; Liu, Hong & Yu, Guangwei
Published in Nanoscale The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015

Abstract

A novel scaly Sn3O?/Tio? nanobelt heterostructured photocatalyst was fabricated via a facile hydrothermal route. The scaly Sn3O? nanoflakes can be synthesized in situ and assembled on surface coarsened Tio? nanobelts through a hydrothermal process. The morphology and distribution of Sn3O? nanoflakes can be well-controlled by simply tuning the Sn/Ti molar ratio of the reactants. Compared with single phase nanostructures of Sn3O? and Tio?, the scaly hybrid nanobelts exhibited markedly enhanced photoelectrochemical (PEC) response, which caused higher photocatalytic hydrogen evolution even without the assistance of Pt as a co-catalyst, and enhanced the degradation ability of organic pollutants under both UV and visible light irradiation. In addition to the increased exposure of active facets and broad light absorption, the outstanding performance is ascribed to the matching energy band structure between Sn3O? and Tio? at the two sides of the heterostructure, which efficiently reduces the recombination of photo-excited electron-hole pairs and prolongs the lifetime of charge carriers. Both photocatalytic assessment and PEC tests revealed that Sn3O?/Tio? heterostructures with a molar ratio of Sn/Ti of 2/1 exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity. This study provides a facile and low-cost method for the large scale production of Sn3O? based materials in various applications.

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