Issue 5, 2023

Assembly of recyclable TiO2@AC/CTs through vdW-integrated strategy for photocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic oxidation

Abstract

Thus far, recyclable photocatalysts for large-scale applications have hardly been developed because traditional chemical epitaxial growth is typically limited to materials with high lattice matching and processing compatibility. Therefore, photocatalytic degradation of pollutants suffers from dispersion and recycling of powdery photocatalysts from water. To address this issue, commercial P25 nanospheres are coated with amorphous carbon (AC) to form TiO2@AC core–shell nanospheres, which physically integrate with commercial carbon textiles (CTs) through van der Waals (vdW) interaction to assemble flexible TiO2@AC/CTs. These commercial materials are suitable for the industrial production of TiO2@AC/CTs, which can greatly promote industrial applications of photocatalytic technology. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the photo-excited electron tends to transfer from TiO2 to amorphous carbon, which significantly enhances the separation of an electron from a hole in the TiO2@AC core–shell nanosphere. The photoelectrocatalysis of TiO2@AC/CTs exerts unexpected performance through synergistic interactions of photocatalysis and electrocatalysis. TiO2@AC/CTs achieve higher cycle stability than P25 during photocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic processes and can address the issue of dispersion and recycling technique of particulate photocatalysts and significantly reduce the recycling cost. The assembly of amorphous carbon-coated P25 and CTs into vdW heterostructures through a vdW-integrated strategy can be a general rule to integrate other powdery photocatalysts with CTs to assemble recyclable carbon textile-based catalysts for industrial applications of photocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis.

Graphical abstract: Assembly of recyclable TiO2@AC/CTs through vdW-integrated strategy for photocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic oxidation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
17 Jan 2023
Accepted
31 Mar 2023
First published
20 Apr 2023

Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2023,10, 1468-1481

Assembly of recyclable TiO2@AC/CTs through vdW-integrated strategy for photocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic oxidation

H. Chen, J. Zhang, X. Xi and W. Tian, Environ. Sci.: Nano, 2023, 10, 1468 DOI: 10.1039/D3EN00040K

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements