Construction of TiO2 hollow nanosphere/g-C3N4 composites with superior visible-light photocatalytic activity and mechanism insight

Abstract An interlayer structure hybrid photocatalyst of TiO 2 hollow sphere/g-C 3 N 4 (TOCN) has been successfully constructed via a facile impregnation process. The photocatalytic activity was evaluated by degrading Rhodamine B under visible irradiation. TOCN-2 with 33 wt.% g-C 3 N 4 had much higher photocatalytic efficiency (98.09%) than pure g-C 3 N 4 (18.62%) and TiO 2 hollow sphere (16.37%). Significantly, TOCN-2 showed much superior photocatalytic performance than TiO 2 nanoparticle/g-C 3 N 4 composite (53.16%), indicating the hollow morphology of TiO 2 also played a crucial role for RhB degradation. In TOCN system, both the morphology effect of TiO 2 and the synergistic effects between TiO 2 and g-C 3 N 4 resulted in significantly enhancing photocatalytic performance.