The construction of photonic crystal/Cu2+ doped TiO2-SiO2 multilayer structured film for enhanced visible light photocatalytic performance: The synergistic effect between the different layers

Abstract

For photocatalytic films, the low degradation efficiency has become an urgent problem to be solved due to the less amount of photocatalytic component. Therefore, it is particularly important to control the matching of interaction effect between each layer by adjusting the photonic crystal and doping, so as to achieve the best photocatalytic performance. Herein, Cu 2+ doped TiO 2 -SiO 2 (CTS) layer was deposited on SiO 2 photonic crystal layer to construct multilayer structured films via vertical deposition method and calcination process. The photonic crystal/Cu 2+ doped TiO 2 -SiO 2 (PC/CTS) film shows the best photocatalytic performance although the amount of catalytic material is little, that is, the degradation rate of RhB by PC/CTS can reach 48.21% after 180 min of visible light irradiation, which is nearly 5 times than that of single-layer CTS film (10.97% after 180 min). Furthermore, a layer of amorphous SiO 2 was deposited between SiO 2 photonic crystal film and photocatalyst CTS layer to investigate the optical local interaction range of SiO 2 photonic crystal. Finally, the mechanism of multilayer structured PC/CTS composite film is discussed, indicating that the synergistic effect between different layers is a decisive factor for effectively improving the visible photocatalytic performance of thin films. • Photonic crystal/Cu 2+ doped SiO 2 -TiO 2 film was constructed by vertical deposition method. • The influencing factors that can match different layers were studied. • The mechanism was explained by the synergistic effect between different layers.