Assembly of surface-defect single-crystalline strontium titanate nanocubes acting as molecular bricks onto surface-defect single-crystalline titanium dioxide (B) nanorods for efficient visible-light-driven photocatalytic performance

Junyan Kuang; Zipeng Xing; Junwei Yin; Zhenzi Li; Qi Zhu; Wei Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2018.11.053

Assembly of surface-defect single-crystalline strontium titanate nanocubes acting as molecular bricks onto surface-defect single-crystalline titanium dioxide (B) nanorods for efficient visible-light-driven photocatalytic performance

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2019 Mar 1:537:441-449. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.11.053. Epub 2018 Nov 14.

Authors

Junyan Kuang¹, Zipeng Xing², Junwei Yin¹, Zhenzi Li³, Qi Zhu⁴, Wei Zhou⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Science, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, PR China.
² Department of Environmental Science, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, PR China. Electronic address: xingzipeng@hlju.edu.cn.
³ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150086, PR China.
⁴ Department of Environmental Science, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, PR China. Electronic address: hdzhuqi@hlju.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Environmental Science, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, PR China. Electronic address: zhouwei1@hlju.edu.cn.

PMID: 30469113
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.11.053

Abstract

Ti³⁺ self-doped single-crystalline SrTiO_3-x nanocubes acting as molecular bricks are successfully assembled onto Ti³⁺ self-doping single-crystalline TiO_2-x(B) nanorods through an effortless two-step hydrothermal process coupled with an in situ solid-state chemical reduction method. SrTiO_3-x nanocubes act as molecular bricks, which are uniformly assembled onto the surface of TiO_2-x(B) nanorods due to lattice matching. The band gap of the resultant SrTiO_3-x/TiO_2-x(B) sample is ∼2.97 eV, which exhibits excellent photocatalytic performance for the reduction of Cr(VI) and hydrogen production under visible light. The apparent rate constant k value for the photocatalytic reaction of SrTiO_3-x/TiO_2-x(B) for Cr(VI) reduction is ∼8 times higher than that of white TiO₂(B). The photocatalytic hydrogen production rate for SrTiO_3-x/TiO_2-x(B) is ∼160.2 μmol g^-1 h^-1, which is ∼5 times higher than that of white TiO₂(B). The enhanced photocatalytic activity can be considered to be caused by a synergetic effect of heterojunction formation and the introduction of Ti³⁺ self-doping, which can not only facilitate the separation of photogenerated charge carriers between TiO_2-x(B) and SrTiO_3-x, but also broaden the photoresponse from the UV to visible-light region.

Keywords: Heterojunction; Photocatalysis; SrTiO(3); Ti(3+) self-doping; TiO(2)(B).