High specific surface area urchin-like hierarchical ZnO-TiO2 architectures: Hydrothermal synthesis and photocatalytic properties

We report the synthesis, characterization and photocatalytic application of ZnO-TiO2 hydrothermal materials. 3D urchin-like TiO2 nanospheres with 1D ZnO nanospindles (UTZ) on the surface had been prepared by the two-step facile hydrothermal method. Photodegradation test of methyl orange (MO) and nitrophenol were examined individually using ZnO (NPs), TiO2 (P25), urchin-like structure TiO2 and ZnO-TiO2 (UTZ). A comparison of the photocatalytic performance of the materials above showed that the ZnO-TiO2 (UTZ) were superior to the other three samples. We expected that the material would have wide potential applications such as chemosensors, UV-vis blockers, self-cleaning, photonic crystals, organic synthesis and solar cells.