With the increasingly serious environmental problems, photocatalysis has recently attracted a great deal of attention, with particular focus on water and air purification and disinfection. Herein, we show an electroreduction strategy to improve significantly the solar absorption and donor density of BiOI nanosheet photocatalyst by introducing oxygen vacancies. These oxygen-deficient BiOI nanosh...

Herein, we report an effective, facile, and low-cost route for preparing ZnO hollow microspheres with a controlled number of shells composed of small ZnO nanoparticles. The formation mechanism of multiple-shelled structures was investigated in detail. The number of shells is manipulated by using different diameters of carbonaceous microspheres. The products were characterized by X-ray powder di...

LaCoO3 epitaxial films were grown on (100), (110) and (111) oriented LaAlO3 substrates by the polymer-assisted deposition method. Crystal structure measurement and cross-section observation indicate that all the LaCoO3 films are epitaxially grown in accordance with the orientation of LaAlO3 substrates, with biaxial compressive strain in the ab plane. Owing to the different strain directions of ...

Fish scale (FS) loaded TiO2 composites were investigated as photocatalysts in degradation of Methyl Orange under solar light irradiation. Composites were prepared through sol-gel method by varying mass ratio of TiO2/FS at 90:10, 70:30 and 50:50, respectively. The catalysts prepared in this study were characterized by using XRD, SEM, FT-IR and nitrogen sorption. The effects of solar irradiation,...

Three polymorphs of Bi(2)O(3) were selectively synthesized via solution-based methods. The phase structures of the as-prepared samples were confirmed by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was employed to study the optical properties of Bi(2)O(3) polymorphs, and the band gaps were estimated to be 2.80, 2.48, and 3.01...

Particles of sub-micron size possess significant capacity to adsorb organic molecules from aqueous media. Semiconductor photocatalysts in particle form could potentially be utilized for dye removal through either physical adsorption or photo-induced chemical process. The photocatalytic and adsorption capabilities of Cu₂O particles with various exposed crystal facets have been studied through se...

The SrTiO3 modified rutile TiO2 composite nanofibers were synthesized by a simple electrospinning technique. The result of XRD, SEM and TEM indicate that the SrTiO3/TiO2 heterojuction has been prepared successfully. Compared with the TiO2 and SrTiO3, the photocatalytic activity of the SrTiO3/TiO2 (rutile) for the degradation of methyl orange exhibits an obvious enhancement under UV illumination...

A facile and efficient approach for the fabrication of mesoporous spherical aggregates of anatase nanocrystals is reported in this paper. Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide was used as the structure-directing agent, and the interaction between cyclohexane microdroplets and the cetyltrimethylammonium bromide self-assemblies led to the assembly of 4-5-nm-sized anatase nanocrystals into spherical aggr...

The photocatalytic removal of water contaminants for ecological systems has become essential in the past few decades. Consequently, commercialization, cost-efficient, earth-abundant and easy to synthesize photocatalysts dye degradation are urgent need. We have demonstrated a simple feasible approach fabricating TiO2–SnO2 nanocomposite via urea-assisted-thermal-decomposition with different mass ...

Both energy band and charge separation and transfer are the crucial affecting factor for a photochemical reaction. Herein, the BiOCl nanosheets without and with surface bismuth vacancy (BOC, V-BOC) are prepared by a simple hydrothermal method. It is found that the new surface defect states caused by bismuth vacancy have greatly up-shifted the valence band and efficiently enhanced the separation...