Photocatalytic performance of TiO2 thin films connected with Cu micro-grid

Aiming at reducing the recombination of photo-induced carriers in semiconductor photocatalytic process, we prepared TiO2 thin film with its surface modified by a connected Cu micro-grid via a microsphere lithography strategy, which showed higher photocatalytic activity than the pure TiO2 film. The improvement of photocatalytic activity of Cu micro-grid to the TiO2 film is due to the charge carrier separation and electron transfer by the conducting metal grid. The photocatalytic activity was improved as metal loading increased, which obtained the best performance at a certain loading amount, and then decreased at higher loading amount. This phenomenon was attributed to the metal’s bulk effect which could be explained by the relationship between the energetic positions and the metal cluster size.