Catalytic activity
Fig. 7 shows the photocatalytic activity (under UV illumination) of TiO2, TiO2/PPy, TiO2/TiO2–V2O5
and the various TiO2/(TiO2–V2O5)/PPy nanocomposites prepared using different polymerization times.
It can be seen that the photocatalytic activity of TiO2/TiO2–V2O5 was inferior to that of the TiO2. This
could be attributed to the fact that the light harvesting efficiency of the hybrid metal oxide (TiO2/TiO2–
V2O5) was lower than that of TiO2 [6]. However, by carrying out an in situ polymerization, photocatalytic
activity of the hybrid metal oxides increased. The above effect might be ascribed to the fact that
PPy is also a kind of semiconducting polymeric binder, capable of absorbing photon and generating the
photo-excited electron–hole pairs (Fig. 6). These factors contributed to the greater charging under UV
and a better transfer of electrons between particles.
Another interesting catalytic effect of the hybrid metal oxides/polymer nanocomposite can be seen
in Fig. 8