Synthesis of Fe-doped WO3 nanostructures with high visible-light-driven photocatalytic activities

•Fe-doped WO3 ultrathin hollow spheres have been obtained with template method.•The band gap of Fe-doped WO3 is tunable by controlling Fe doped contents.•The photocatalysis of Fe-doped WO3 nanostructures has been improved considerably.

In this paper, the Fe-doped WO3 nanostructures with precisely controlled Fe doping contents are obtained by using a template method. The characterizations obviously show that the as-prepared samples have hollow spherical like morphology, small grain size (10 nm), high crystalline quality, and ultrahigh surface area (225 m2/g). Furthermore, the band gap of the Fe-doped WO3 nanostructures is facilely tunable by controlling the Fe contents. And the density-functional theory (DFT) calculation reveals that the formation of impurity band in the band gap narrows the band gap of the Fe-doped WO3 nanostructures. The photocatalytic activity of WO3 nanostructures could be remarkably enhanced by doping the Fe impurity. This can be attributed to the fact that the red shift of absorption edge and the trapping effect of the Fe-doped WO3 nanostructures. The research result provides a general and effective method to synthesize different photocatalysts with enhanced visible-light-driven photocatalytic performance.

Graphical abstractThe Fe-doped WO3 nanostructures are obtained by using a template method with precisely controlled Fe doping contents and the photocatalytic activity of Fe-doped WO3 could be remarkably enhanced by doping Fe impurity under visible light.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide