Enhanced photoelectrochemical photocatalytic activities in hydrothermal synthesized SrTiO3/TiO2 heterostructure thin films

Abstract

Heterostructured SrTiO3/TiO2 nanofibers were fabricated, under various doping times, by two steps in situ hydrothermal method using TiO2 nanofibers as both template and reactant. The as-fabricated heterostructure composite included SrTiO3 nanocubes or nanoparticles assembled uniformly on the surface of TiO2 nanofibers undergoes a huge photoelectric performance, evaluated by the photo-to-dark current ratio, which reaches three orders of magnitude of that observed in TiO2. The results presented here can be owing to the improvement of charge separation derived from the coupling effect of TiO2 and SrTiO3 nanocomposites and demonstrate the potential prospects of heterostructures with smaller nanostructure size in fabricating high-response UV detectors. Furthermore, SrTiO3/TiO2 nanofibers exhibit enhanced photocatalytic activity in the decomposition of the methylene blue aqueous solution under ultraviolet light, which could be attributed to the improvement of charge separation derived from the coupling effect of TiO2 and SrTiO3 nanocomposites.