A novel fabrication approach for three-dimensional hierarchical porous metal oxide/carbon nanocomposites for enhanced solar photocatalytic performance

Abstract

A facile fabrication approach for metal oxide/C materials with a hierarchical pore structure on different length scales is proposed. The material is synthesized from inorganic/organic metal oxo clusters as molecular precursors and processed using a dual-template method followed by heat treatment. TiO₂ and ZrO₂ were used as two examples of metal oxide materials and their corresponding carbon-based composites showed superior photocatalytic activity in methylene blue degradation compared with the control samples. This work demonstrates a novel approach for processing metal oxide-based photocatalysts with enhanced reactivity that is broadly applicable to the design of complex functional metal oxide composites with high electrochemical performance for energy applications.