Generating oxygen vacancies in Cu 2+ ‐doped TiO 2 hollow spheres for enhanced photocatalytic activity and antimicrobial activity

Developing cheap photocatalysts with highly visible‐light activity is greatly desired for environmental pollution treatment. In this work, the authors designed and synthesised Cu 2+ ‐doped TiO 2 (Cu‐TiO 2 ) hollow spheres with enhanced photocatalytic activity and antimicrobial activity using a simple hydrothermal process. The X‐ray powder diffraction (XRD) results revealed that Cu‐TiO 2 hollow spheres were anatase crystal phase. The Cu 2+ ‐doped into TiO 2 can be confirmed by XRD, Raman spectra, and UV–Vis spectrum. The photocatalytic activity of Cu‐TiO 2 samples was evaluated by the degradation of methyl orange. Comparing to the undoped TiO 2 , 6% Cu‐TiO 2 sample exhibited remarkably high photocatalytic towards methyl orange under simulated sunlight irradiation, which was attributed to the fact that copper ion doping produced numerous oxygen vacancies (V O ) in the material. In addition, it also showed improved antibacterial properties against both Gram‐positive Staphylococcus aureus ( S.aureus ) and Gram‐negative Escherichia coli ( E.coli ) bacteria. These results establish that Cu 2+ doping can obviously improve the photocatalytic performance of TiO 2 under simulated sunlight.