Engineering of mono-dispersed mesoporous TiO₂ over 1-D nanorods for water purification under visible light...

Herein we synthesized a novel structure of mesoporous TiO₂ decorated on 1D ZnO nanorods for environmental remediation. The effect of mesoporous TiO₂ over 1D nanorods were investigated. The phase transitions of nanocomposite were confirmed by powder diffraction analysis. The morphological investigation of synthesized TiO₂/ZnO catalyst revealed that the TiO₂ are in porous in nature which covered the surface of 1D nanorods. The size of mesoporous TiO₂ nanoparticles was about 10-15 nm. The chemical composition and elemental mapping results clearly evident that the presence of ZnO and TiO₂ is distributed uniformly on ZnO nanorods. TiO₂/ZnO nanocomposite shows enhanced activity which degrades in 14 min under visible light irradiation. TiO₂/ZnO catalyst with 5 wt % exhibited the high photocatalytic activity (0.1882 min^-1). It is proposed that a synergistic interaction between ZnO and TiO₂ leads to a charge separation which leads to the enhanced activity.