Fabrication of hierarchical hollow silica/silver/silica/titania composite particles

Abstract

Hierarchical composite particles with hollow structure were fabricated in this work. The composite particles were composed of guest particles and host ones, which were achieved by Stöber method, and a raspberrylike morphology was produced by the ''anchoring'' of guest particles on the surface of host ones. Moreover, the hollow structure was obtained by template-assisted approach. The raspberry-like morphology and hollow structure of composite particles were confirmed by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. As multiple distinct functional components were integrated into the raspberry-like particles, the obtained composite particles exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible light irradiation. The rate of degradation of the asprepared composite particles was ca. 13 times faster than that of pure TiO 2 under visible light irradiation. Furthermore, a brief photocatalytic mechanism was presented. The composite particles, combining hierarchical morphology and hollow structure, exhibit promising potential in selfcleaning and nanoreactor areas. Graphical Abstract

Template‐free synthesis of hierarchical zinc oxide with improved photocatalytic properties

“…In them, hydrothermal‐solvothermal approach is a facile, inexpensive and popular preparation method. Yet, amongst most hydrothermal‐solvothermal synthesis, to create the hierarchical structure, template approaches including hard and soft sacrificial templates often are used, which make the reaction process extremely complicated . Here, we adopted a template‐free synthetic method to synthesise the hierarchical zinc oxide with tunable and uniform morphology, in which a zinc oxide precursor, Zn(NO 3 ) 2 ·6H 2 O, was solvothermally reacted in absolute ethanol and diethylene glycol.…”