Controlled synthesis of Ag-coated TiO2 nanofibers and their enhanced effect in photocatalytic applications

Novel nanostructured Ag/TiO2 hybrid nanofibers (NFs) have been successfully prepared via a simple electrospinning process combined with silver mirror reaction. The Ag/TiO2 NFs demonstrated a unique morphology with evenly distributed Ag nanoparticles uniformly deposited onto the surface of each individual TiO2 NFs. The loading capacity and size of Ag NPs can be easily controlled by varying the silver mirror reaction time. Compared with pristine TiO2 NFs, such heterogeneous Ag/TiO2 nanocomposites exhibited preferable photocatalytic activity during photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine- B under the simulated sunlight irradiation and this enhanced photocatalytic performance was driven by combination and interaction between TiO2 and Ag NPs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.