Synthesis of Ag-decorated porous TiO2 nanowires through a sunlight induced reduction method and its enhanced photocatalytic activity

In this work, Ag-decorated porous TiO2 nanowires were successfully synthesized via a facile and low-cost sunlight induced reduction method. The cooperation of sunlight irradiation and ethanol reduction results the formation and decoration of the Ag nanoparticles on the porous TiO2 nanowires. The structure of the Ag-decorated porous TiO2 nanowires were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) measurements. It can be seen that the Ag nanoparticles are well dispersed within the porous TiO2 nanowires. The as-prepared Ag-decorated porous TiO2 nanowires exhibits excellent photocatalytic properties. The photocatalytic tests show that 10 ppm methylene blue can be photodegraded within 60 min. And the photodegradation ratio of the Ag-decorated porous TiO2 nanowires much higher than that of P25 and porous TiO2 nanowires. Moreover, the Ag-decorated porous TiO2 nanowires also reveal good photocatalytic activity towards to other organic pollutions, such as phenol and R6G. Therefore, it is believed that the Ag-decorated porous TiO2 nanowires can be used as a potential high performance photocatalyst in wastewater treatment.