Construction of TiO2/ZnO Heterostructure for Photocatalytic Application

The double hierarchical nanostructure of TiO2/ZnO were prepared by an effective way of combining electrospinning and the RF Magnetron Sputtering technique. In this work, the anatase TiO2 nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)/tetrabutyl titanate (Ti(OBu)(4)) solutions on glass substrates followed by calcination at 500 degrees C, and then dense secondary ZnO nanorods were grown by magnetron sputtering technique. It shows that ZnO nanocrystals distributed on the TiO2 nanofibers could serve as favorable hole channels and receptors for efficient separation of photoexcited charge carriers, which results in significantly enhanced photocatalytic performanes of ZnO/TiO2 heterostructure compared with TiO2 nanofibers, and ZnO film. The presented approach is hoped to be applied to the construction of other photocatalytic systems.