Molecule assembly of heterostructured TiO2@BiOCl via fenton-like reaction for enhanced solar energy conversion

Abstract In this work, we applied the fenton-like reaction to fabricate TiO2 nanocrystalline, and employed molecular self-assembly with TiO2 and BiOCl to form composite photocatalyst with cookie-like nano-heterostructure for enhanced solar energy to hydrogen. The TiO2@BiOCl photocatalyst with cookie-like nano-heterostructure exhibited excellent photocatalytic performance for the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution under sunlight irradiation compared to the single TiO2 or BiOCl. Besides, the TiO2@BiOCl photocatalyst displayed outstanding reusability and stability in the photocatalytic reaction. Meanwhile, the possible mechanisms of cookie-like nano-heterostructure formation and photocatalytic redox reaction have been proposed. What's more, this work demonstrated a new perspective for the design and mass preparation of TiO2-based composite photocatalytic materials at atmospheric condition, which demonstrated that this method has enormous potential to achieve mass preparation of efficient photocatalyst for photocatalytic application.