Construction of Heterostructured Fe2O3-TiO2 Microdumbbells for Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation

Designing advanced structures for heterojunction photocatalysts is an effective approach to enhance their performance toward solar-energy conversion. Herein we develop a facile synthetic strategy for the fabrication of Fe2O3-TiO2 microdumbbells. With the assistance of preferentially adsorbed hexadecylamine molecules, amorphous TiO2 nanospheres with tunable size are grown at the two ends of Fe-based metal-organic compound microrods. Subsequent annealing of the hybrid obtained leads to the formation of a novel heterostructured Fe2O3-TiO2 microdumbbell photocatalyst. Owing to the heterojunction formed and the unique structure, Fe2O3-TiO2 microdumbbells with optimized composition and morphology show enhanced performance for photoelectrochemical water oxidation, compared to monophasic Fe2O3 and TiO2 materials as well as physical mixtures thereof.