Photoreduction deposition preparation of hollow Ni(OH)2@TiO2 microspheres with mutually enhanced bifunctional catalytic performance

Photo-deposition method has the advantages of simplicity, environmental friendliness, and high efficiency, and has been widely used in the field of materials preparation. In this paper, we firstly prepared hollow black TiO 2 microspheres by template method, then using the mesoporous hollow microspheres as a carrier, NiCl 2 ·6 H 2 O as raw material, a novel kind of hollow Ni(OH) 2 @TiO 2 composite microspheres was prepared by photochemical deposition. Characterization of X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), fluorescence spectrophotometry (PL), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) indicated that the two units of TiO 2 and Ni(OH) 2 in the composite hollow microspheres form tightly chemical connections. More importantly, this chemical connection endowed the two functional units with mutually enhanced catalytic performance for reduction of aromatic nitro compounds and photocatalytic degradation of emerging organic pollutants. For example, it can catalyze the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP) by NaBH 4 with a k value of 0.8457 min −1 , as well as degrade tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH) with a degradation rate of 92.29% within 60 min with a k value of 0.0606 min −1 , which is superior to most previous reports. Finally, based on a series of control experiments, a plausible mutually enhanced catalytic mechanism was proposed.