Fabricating hollow, multishell CeO2 microspheres for enhanced photocatalytic degradation of RhB under visible light

A well-defined structure is greatly helpful to enhance the performance of photocatalysis. Herein, we plan to fabricate multi-shell CeO 2 photocatalyst with hollow structure characters for enhanced photodegradation RhB efficiency. The SEM showed that the samples were the regular micro-spheres with a diameter of 1.5–2 μm, and the TEM image displayed these microspheres having multi-shell hollow structures with core–shell morphology. The RhB was degraded (83%) under visible light irradiation within 150 min. This multi-shell hollow CeO 2 (MSH-CeO 2 ) has a larger surface area and more oxygen vacancies (OVs), the catalytic performance is mainly improved by enhancing the light absorption properties and facilitating the separation efficiency of the electron-holes. This work introduces the effecting of morphology on the performance of the catalyst, which will provide a new idea for the construction of efficient photocatalysts. Graphical abstract