Hydrothermal Synthesis and Photocatalytic Activity of TiO 2 -ZrO 2 Hybrid Composite Microspheres

The hollow TiO2-ZrO2 hybrid composite microspheres were successfully synthesized by hard template-hydrothermal method. The resulting materials were characterized by SEM, XRD, DRS, FT-IR and BET techniques. The results showed that the TiO2-ZrO2 hybrid composite microspheres with hollow structure were piled by TiO2 (anatase) and ZrO2 (monoclinic) hybrid nanoparticles. The specific surface area and the average pore size of the as-prepared samples were determined to be 224.6 m2/g and 4.159 nm, respectively. The photocatalytic activity of the samples was also evaluated by degradation of methylene blue (MB) compared to the hollow TiO2. It was found that the resultant TiO2-ZrO2 hollow microspheres show higher photocatalytic activity than hollow TiO2-ZrO2. The degradation rate of MB can be up to 99.4% after 60min of a high pressure mercury lamp (125W) irradiation.