Insight into Superior Visible Light Photocatalytic Activity for Degradation of Dye over Corner-truncated Cubic Ag2O Decorated TiO2 Hollow Nanofibers

Ag2O/TiO2 heterostructure has been constructed by loading corner-truncated cubic Ag2O on the TiO2 hollow nanofibers via an electrospinning-precipitation method. Compared to individual Ag2O and TiO2, Ag2O/TiO2 heterostructure exhibits obviously enhanced photocatalytic activity for the photodegradation of methyl orange(MO) under visible light irradiation. The composite with molar ratio of Ag2O to TiO2 at 4:10 exhibits the best photocatalytic performance with MO degraded 93% in 6 min. The superior activity is mainly attributed to the surface plasmon resonance(SPR) effect of metallic Ag in-situ produced during the photocatalytic process, which can favor electron transfer to the conduction band of TiO2. This leads to the efficient separation of photogenerated carriers, thus a superior photodegradation activity. Moreover, the energy band alignments of Ag2O/TiO2 heterostructure are calculated, which provides strong support for the proposed mechanism.