Construction and photocatalytic performance of fluorinated ZnO-TiO2 heterostructure composites

Titanium dioxide, as a promising photocatalytic material, has attracted extensive attention in the field of photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants in sewage. However, the photocatalytic performance needs to be further improved. In this work, fluorinated ZnO-TiO2 composites (F-ZTO) were prepared by a simple coprecipitation method. The photocatalytic performance of the samples was studied in detail with methyl orange as the target degradation product. The results indicated that under the same conditions, the degradation rates of 6% F-ZTO, F-TiO2 and TiO2 for methyl orange reached 93.75%, 76.56% and 62.89% respectively. This showed that the method used in this work could effectively improve the photocatalytic degradation performance of titanium dioxide. 6% F-ZTO showed an excellent photocatalytic activity, which was attributed to the small grain size, the large specific surface area and the effective inhibition of photoelectron-hole recombination due to fluorination and zinc oxide coupling. In three consecutive cycles, the photocatalytic activity was almost maintained, indicating that 6% F-ZTO had a good recycling performance.

Automated summary

Fluorinated ZnO-TiO2 composites exhibit excellent photocatalytic degradation performance, attributed to their small grain size, large specific surface area, effective degradation rate of methyl orange, and good recycling performance.