Fabrication of Fe2TiO5/TiO2 nanoheterostructures with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity

Fe2TiO5 is a promising photocatalyst owing to its appropriate band gap, outstanding photochemical stability, low cost as well as electronic and atomic structures matching with TiO2. In this work, we have fabricated Fe2TiO5/TiO2 heterostructure hollow nanospheres with 10 nm scale shell thickness, 220 m(2) g(-1) surface area and uniform distribution of Fe2TiO5 and TiO2 by a facile carbon templates and ion adsorption process. It is demonstrated that the visible photocatalytic activities for degrading pollutant of Fe2TiO5/TiO2 heterostructures are greatly enhanced (an increase more than 3 times) compared with either P25 or pure Fe2TiO5 under visible light. Comparative experiments have been carried out with different Fe/Ti molar ratios exhibited diverse catalytic activity, the mechanism of which has been discussed in detail.