Synthesis of visible-light driven CrxOy-TiO2 binary photocatalyst based on hierarchical macro-mesoporous silica

Hierarchical macro-mesoporous silica materials co-incorporated with Cr and Ti were directly synthesized by adopting close-packed array of polystyrene microsphere as hard template for macropore through a simple soaking-calcination way, where Si/Ti ratio was fixed at 200 and Si/Cr ratio was set between 200 and 10. Ti specie is highly dispersed in porous matrix and Cr specie mainly exists as tetra-coordinated CrO3 at higher Si/Cr ratio (Si/Cr >= 50), which transforms to a mixture of CrO3 and crystallized hexa-coordinated Cr(2)O(3)when Si/Cr ratio is below 50. This highly interconnected porous material co-incorporated with Cr and Ti presents highest visible-light driven photocatalytic activity at Si/Cr = 20 toward degradation of AO7. Moreover, macro-mesoporous photocatalyst presents higher activity than those of macroporous and mesoporous ones at the same Si/Cr ratio. The improved visible light driven catalytic activity is mainly attributed to effective metal to metal charge transfer from Cr(VI) to Ti(IV) benefitted from the uniform dispersion of these two species in hierarchical porous silica matrix. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.