The synthesis and photocatalytic performance of peapod-like one dimensional nanocomposites composed of Au nanoparticles and TiO₂ nanofibers

Recently, material scientists have paid a lot of attention on the synthesis of one dimensional peapodlike nanostructures composed of metal nanoparticles and inorganic nanofibers due to their superior properties. In this work, we realized the synthesis of Au-TiO₂ nanopeapods by using Au-bacteria cellulose nanofibers as templates in aqueous solution through a simple sol-gel method. Reaction conditions such as the Au contents in the gold-bacteria cellulose nanofibers, the reaction times and the calcination temperatures were investigated in detail for the synthesis of nanopeapods of Au-TiO₂. The photocatalytic degradation tests show that the presence of a small amount of Au nanoparticles can improve the photocatalytic performance of Au-TiO₂ nanocomposites compared with pure TiO₂ nanofibers. The strategy to synthesize peapodlike Au-TiO₂ nanocomposites by using biotemplates may shed light for the synthesis of other peapod-like nanostructures.