Synthesis of Zr-doped TiO2 templated from cloth and its photocatalytic activity

Biomorphic Zr-doped TiO2 (ZrxTi1 − xO2) with hierarchical micro- and nanostructures was successfully fabricated using cloth as the host template. We found that the resulting ZrxTi1 − xO2 faithfully duplicated the morphologic microstructures of the initial cloth with grain size of about 10–50 nm. The photocatalytic activity of the as-prepared ZrxTi1 − xO2 was examined by the degradation of rhodamine B in aqueous solution under simulated solar light, which showed that templates pretreated with NaOH solution followed by mixed acid and an appropriate amount of doped Zr (3 mol%) could significantly enhance the photocatalytic activities of ZrxTi1 − xO2. This simple template method provides a cost-effective and ecofriendly route to synthesize other metal-doped semiconductor materials of predicted morphology.