Rational Construction of MOF-Derived Porous ZnTiO 3 /TiO 2 Heterostructured Photocatalysts with Remarkable Photocatalytic Performance.

TiO 2 has been widely used in photodegradation of pollutants, but it suffers from inferior photocatalytic performance under solar light illumination. Thus, novel porous ZnTiO 3 /TiO 2 heterostructured photocatalysts are constructed by hydrothermal and carbonization techniques using ZIF-8 as a sacrificial template. After coating with TiO 2 , ZIF-8 nanocubes are selectively etched and subsequently coprecipitated with Ti ions during the hydrothermal process. Thereafter, the pores generated from carbonized ZIF-8 provide a large specific surface area and abundant active reaction sites for photocatalysis after annealing, producing stable ZnTiO 3 /TiO 2 nanocomposites. Thus, porous ZnTiO 3 /TiO 2 heterostructured photocatalysts exhibit excellent photocatalytic performance under solar light irradiation due to the boosted electron-hole separation/transfer. The kinetic constant of ZnTiO 3 /TiO 2 nanocomposites (4.66 × 10 -1 min -1 ) is almost 100 and 3.7 times higher than that of self-degradation (4.69 × 10 -3 min -1 ) and TiO 2 (1.27 × 10 -1 min -1 ), respectively. This facile strategy provides a deep insight into synthesizing heterostructured photocatalysts with high efficiency in the field of environmental remediation.