ZnO as a promising photocatalyst has gained much attention for the removal of organic pollutants from water. However, the main drawbacks of the relatively low photocatalytic activity and high recombination rate of photoexcited electron-hole pairs restrict its potential applications. Promoting the spatial separation of photoexcited charge carriers is of paramount significance for photocatalysis because the difference in the band positions makes the potential gradient at the composite boundary. In this work, binary CdS/ZnO and CoTiO3/ZnO are first prepared by dispersion method and then decorated with ZnO particles to construct CdS/CoTiO3/ZnO ternary composites. For this reason, the CdS/CoTiO3/ZnO ternary composites was effectively designed and analyzed for the crystalline structure, light absorption, photoexcitation behavior and surface morphological properties by X-ray diffraction, diffuse reflectance UV/visible absorption spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy and scanning electron micrograph respectively. The photocatalytic activity was examined by degradation of the dye solution spectrophotometrically. The results of photocatalytic degradation indicated that the CdS/CoTiO3/ZnO ternary composites are much higher than those of bare CdS, CoTiO3, ZnO and any binary composites such as CoTiO3/ZnO and ZnO/CdS. The enhanced activity could be attributed to the drop electron transfer from CdS to ZnO to CoTiO3 through the interfacial potential gradient in the ternary hybrid conduction bands. The enhanced electron transfer of CdS/CoTiO3/ZnO ternary composites was also applicable to degrade other reactive dyes.

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