Rational Construction of MOF-Derived Porous ZnTiO₃/TiO₂ Heterostructured Photocatalysts with Remarkable Photocatalytic Performance

TiO2 has been widely used in photodegradation of pollutants, but it suffers from inferior photocatalytic performance under solar light illumination. Thus, novel porous ZnTiO3/TiO2 heterostructured photocatalysts are constructed by hydrothermal and carbonization techniques using ZIF-8 as a sacrificial template. After coating with TiO2, ZIF-8 nanocubes are selectively etched and subsequently coprecipitated with Ti ions during the hydrothermal process. Thereafter, the pores generated from carbonized ZIF-8 provide a large specific surface area and abundant active reaction sites for photocatalysis after annealing, producing stable ZnTiO3/TiO2 nanocomposites. Thus, porous ZnTiO3/TiO2 heterostructured photocatalysts exhibit excellent photocatalytic performance under solar light irradiation due to the boosted electron-hole separation/transfer. The kinetic constant of ZnTiO3/TiO2 nanocomposites (4.66 x 10(-1) min(-1)) is almost 100 and 3.7 times higher than that of self-degradation (4.69 x 10(-3) min(-1)) and TiO2 (1.27 x 10(-1) min(-1)), respectively. This facile strategy provides a deep insight into synthesizing heterostructured photocatalysts with high efficiency in the field of environmental remediation.