High photocatalytic activity of hierarchical SiO@C-doped TiO hollow spheres in UV and visible light towards degradation of rhodamine B.

Ongoing research activities are targeted to explore high photocatalytic activity of TiO-based photocatalysts for the degradation of environmental contaminants under UV and visible light irradiation. In this work, we devise a facile, cost-effective technique to in situ synthesize hierarchical SiO@C-doped TiO (SCT) hollow spheres for the first time. This strategy mainly contains the preparation of monodisperse cationic polystyrene spheres (CPS), sequential deposition of inner SiO, the preparation of the sandwich-like CPS@SiO@CPS particles, and formation of outer TiO. After the one-step removal of CPS templates by calcination at 450°C, hierarchical SiO@C-doped TiO hollow spheres are in situ prepared. The morphology, hierarchical structure, and properties of SCT photocatalyst were characterized by TEM. SEM, STEM Mapping, BET, XRD, UV-vis spectroscopy, and XPS. Results strongly confirm the carbon doping in the outer TiO lattice of SCT hollow spheres. When the as-synthesized SCT hollow spheres were employed as a photocatalyst for the degradation of Rhodamine B under visible-light and ultraviolet irradiation, the SCT photocatalyst exhibits a higher photocatalytic activity than commercial P25, effectively overcoming the limitations of poorer UV activity for many previous reported TiO-based photocatalysts due to doping.