Effect of magnetic field on improvement of photocatalytic performance of V(2)O(5)/TiO(2) nanoheterostructure films prepared by sparking method

Our porous V(2)O(5)/TiO(2) nanoheterostructure films (with a Ti/V atomic ratio of 1:1) were fabricated via a single-step sparking method using a strong magnetic field (0.5 T) without annealing requirement for the first time. We found that the magnetic flux arrangement has effect on film crystallization, unique morphology, large specific surface area, and surprisingly controllable phase structure of the films. An amorphous TV film was transformed to the TiO(2) (anatase/rutile) phase (for TVN) and V(2)O(5)–VO(2) mixed-phase (for TVH) without destroying the mesopores from an annealing process. Moreover, the TVH sample able to improve the degradation rate up to 270% compared with pre-annealed TV films and up to 30% with post-annealed (400 °C) TVA films. In this paper, the influence of magnetic flux arrangement on structural, morphological, optical, and photocatalytic properties of prepared sample have been investigated and reported.