Highly efficient water purification by WO3-based homo/heterojunction photocatalyst under visible light

Bandgap engineering has attracted increasing interest in the field of semiconductive materials with specific electrical and optical characteristics for various applications, such as solar energy harvesting, energy-related photocatalysts. Here, we propose a novel facile method to obtain combination type-II structure Ohmic contact by fabrication WO3/Ti-WOx/TiHyOz homo/heterojunction on WO3 photocatalyst using ball milling. The morphology structural characterizations material are obtained UV–vis, SEM/EDS, XRD, Raman spectroscopy, XPS. It is revealed that titanium hydride (TiH2) facilitates simultaneous reduction cation doping, which generates intervalent W ions (W5+, W4+) oxygen deficiency, leading formation new band structures at interface. As result, significantly extends light absorption above 400 nm spatial separation photoexcited carriers, enhances photocatalytic performance degrade azo-dye water pollutants under visible irradiation.