Synthesis of porous Bi4Ti3O12 nanofibers by electrospinning and their enhanced visible-light-driven photocatalytic properties

Abstract

Bi(4)Ti(3)O(12) nanofibers with diameters of 50-100 nm have been fabricated for the first time through a simple and economical technique of electrospinning combined with subsequent calcination. The as-formed Bi(4)Ti(3)O(12) nanofibers are porous and composed of inter-linked nanoparticles of 30-50 nm in size. They exhibit both enhanced visible-light-driven photocatalytic decomposition of rhodamine B (RhB) and favorable recycling capability. It is attributed to not only the macrostructure, such as the morphology, surface texture, and grain shape, but also the intrinsic structures of oxygen vacancies and surface adsorbed oxygen.

Facile fabrication of In2O3/Bi2WO6 heterostructured microbelts with enhanced photocatalytic activity

“…4c, d. Interestingly, a lot of nanopores can be observed on the surface of the In 2 O 3 /Bi 2 WO 6 microbelts and this kind of nanoporous architecture is very beneficial for the catalyst design due to the facilitating the molecular transport of reactants and products. During the decomposition process of PVP and inorganic salts [36], much gas is released, leading to the porous structures between nanoparticles. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis (Fig.…”

Microwave-assisted synthesis of self-assembled BiO1.84H0.08 hierarchical nanostructures as a new photocatalyst

“…The photocatalytic activity was governed by various factors such as surface area, the band gap, the oxidation potential of photogenerated holes, and the separation efficiency of photogenerated electrons and holes [30][31][32]. In the BiO 1.84 H 0.08 , the high photocatalytic activity of the BiO 1.84 H 0.08 hierarchical nanostructure could be attributed to the following reasons.…”

Highly dispersed spherical Bi3.25La0.75Ti3O12 nanocrystals via topotactic crystallization of aggregation-free gel particles from an effective inverse miniemulsion sol–gel approach

“…Compared to Bi 4 Ti 3 O 12 , Bi 3.25 La 0.75 Ti 3 O 12 shows excellent dynamic characteristics during its alternating polarizations, such as high switching speed and fatigue resistance, and then has found potential applications in nonvolatile ferroelectric random-access memories (FeRAM) (Park et al 1999;Lee et al 2002;Kingon 1999;Nuraje and Su 2013). Over the past decade, the synthesis of BLT or Bi 4 Ti 3 O 12 nanocrystals with regular morphologies has attracted an increasing research interest and many methods have been explored, such as wet no-coprecipitation chemistry (Lisoni et al 2001), microemulsion assisted sol-gel process (Hou et al 2010), hydrothermal route (Wang et al 2013), electrospinning (Hou et al 2013), hydrolysis method (Kan et al 2004), and nanoscale solid-state reactive diffusion (Buscaglia et al 2011). However, it is still in difficulty to synthesize cuboid or spherical BLT nanocrystals since the BLT strongly tends to grow into plate-like nanocrystals due to its much higher growth rates in the a-and b-axis directions than that along the c-axis in layered perovskite structure.…”