Composite Oxide The Zrtio <sub> 4 </ Sub> Preparation Of Hollow Spheres And Their Photocatalytic Properties Study

As a kind of ceramic materials with great importance, zirconium titanate have attracted much attention for their novel properties, for example, their comprehensive applications in Photocatalysis, pigment, ceramic etc. Meanwhile, some special structure such as hollow sphere is very useful too. So if we can prepare composites containing zirconium with hollow structure, its catalysis will be greatly improved. In the past decade, many methods have been developed to synthesize zirconium titanate nanocrystals with hollow structure. In this paper, we report a simple hydrolyze reaction which using carbon spheres as template to prepare ZrTiO₄ hollow spheres. Then we discussed the effect of concentration on the final product, and a series of characterizations were carried out. At last, photocatalysis was also studied in this article.1. Synthesis of ZrTiO₄ hollow spheresWe use ZrOCl₂·8H₂O and Ti(SO₄)₂ as raw material, carbon sphere as template to synthesis composite oxide of hollow ZrTiO₄ sphere. As ZrOCl₂·8H₂O and Ti(SO₄)₂ hydrolyze and polymerize in water , titanium zirconium composite formed on the surface of carbon sphere. Hollow ZrTiO₄ sphere is formed after sintering which can eliminate the template. We study the synthesis process of hollow ZrTrO₄ sphere with different ratio of Ti/Zr. The product was characterized by XRD and TEM etc. The result revealed that the hydrolyzation and polymerization of titanium and zirconium played an important role in the formation of the hollow ZrTiO₄ sphere. Although the ratio of raw material didn't affect the shape of product, it affected the purity. Pure ZrTiO₄ formed only when raw material of stoichiometric ratio.2. Photocatalysis of ZrTiO₄ hollow spheresDegradation of Methylene blue (MB) was used as a model to research the photocatalysis of ZrTiO₄ hollow spheres. We observed the degradation of ZrTiO₄ hollow spheres under the condition of photocatalysis by measuring UV-vis spectrum with different illumination time. The result confirmed that ZrTiO₄ hollow spheres bear predominant photocatalysis. In conclusion, we have used carbon spheres as template to synthesize ZrTiO₄ hollow spheres successfully .The Ti/Zr ratio in the raw material was very import to the final composition. We expect we can do some help to synthesize high quality ZrTiO₄ hollow spheres on the basis of our work.