Abstract
Phosphor doping in association with a heterostructure not only modifies the band structure of titanium dioxide (TiO2) to make it more responsive to visible light, but it also suppresses its charge recombination and causes TiO2 to have enhanced photoactivity. In this paper, we report on the controlled synthesis of phosphor-doped binary and ternary TiO2 nanostructures through a hydrothermal method. The phase and morphology of the samples can be tuned by simply changing the hydrothermal time. Also, the visible-light photoactivity of the samples was evaluated by the reduction of nitrobenzene. The as-prepared catalysts exhibit enhanced photocatalytic activity in comparison to P-25 and the undoped counterpart, and the selected catalyst shows high photostability and photoactivity after reuse five times. These new TiO2 nanostructures present a promising candidate for application in photocatalysis, photochemistry, sensors, and solar cells. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved.