Periodic mesoporous organosilica functionalized hollow TiO2 sphere for selective aerobic oxidation

A promising preparation strategy, photoactive porphyrin-periodic mesoporous organosilica functionalized hollow TiO2 Sphere for selective aerobic oxidation in visible light. [Display omitted] •A promising preparation strategy for functionalized hollowTiO2 spheres has been proposed.•The immobilizing of photoactive units in the periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) framework can expand its applications in the photoelectric field.•The porphyrin-PMO functionalized hollowTiO2 sphere can realize multi-component synergy.•The catalyst can selectively and efficiently oxidize various sulfides in the water phase under visible light. A promising synthetic method of functionalized titanium dioxide (TiO2) has been proposed in this work which combined photoactive porphyrin-periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) with hollow TiO2 nanospheres to achieve a multi-component synergistic system. The prepared composite TiO2@Pro showed photocatalytic activity in aerobic oxidation of sulfide in the aqueous phase under visible light. The high reactivity was attributed to the increased adsorption and diffusion of substrates due to the catalyst’s large specific surface area (337 m2/g), amphiphilicity, wide visible light absorption, and high electron-hole pair separation rate. This strategy provides a new way of designing TiO2-based photocatalysts for heterogeneous catalysis under visible light.