Preparation and Photocatalytic Performances of TiO<sub>2</sub>/SnO<sub>2</sub> Composite Films Supported on Carbon Fiber

Abstract

The compound photocatalytic materials of TiO2/SnO2 films with bilayer structure supported on polyacrylonitrile based carbon fiber (PAN-CF) substrates were prepared via the dip-coating technology, and Titanium dioxide (TiO2) and tin dioxide (SnO2) precursory sol were prepared by sol-gel method. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), X-ray energy spectrum (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to characterize the structure of materials, and methyl orange (MO) with concentration of 80mg/L as the target degradants was used to investigate the photocatalytic property of the composites under UV irradiation. The results revealed that the photocatalytic activity of composite is effectively enhanced result from the application of TiO2/SnO2 bilayer structure films, which can be considered as that the recombination of photo-induced electrons is restrained by SnO2 film effectively, and the 3#-TiO2/SnO2/CF exhibited optimum catalytic performance. In addition, the superiority of carbon fiber as carrier was played fully due to the generation of porous films, which is favorable to capture the intermediate products.