Abstract
The development of photocatalytic materials with specific morphologies promises to be a good opportunity to discover geometrically relevant properties. Herein, this paper reported a facile hydrothermal method to directly synthesize TiO2 crystals with flower-like structures using tetrabutyl titanate (TBT) as a titanium source and ethylene glycol as an additive. We also proposed a reasonable growth mechanism by controlling reaction time in detail. The as-prepared samples were analyzed by using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy for structure and morphology characterization. The N2 adsorption-desorption isotherm results showed that the surface area of flower-like TiO2 with 10 h reaction time can reach 297 m2/g. We evaluated the photocatalytic performance of samples by using the degradation rate of methylene blue (MB) solution under UV-vis light. The TiO2 with 10 h reaction time exhibited a superior photocatalytic property than other samples in degrading MB under UV-vis light irradiation. More importantly, the catalyst could be reused many times. These results could benefit from the special morphology, high crystallinity and large specific surface area of the samples.
Highlights
With the increasing use of energy resources around the world, it has become a major topic of research to develop a high-efficiency, environmentally-friendly, low-cost energy conversion and storage system
The results demonstrated that the flower-like TiO2 with 10 h reaction time exhibits the higher crystallinity and high photocatalytic activity for degradation of methylene blue (MB) under UV-vis light irradiation
It is worth noting that the XRD pattern of the sample with 0.5 h reaction time showed only one protrusion at 25.3◦, which due to the presence of amorphous TiO2 particles
Summary
With the increasing use of energy resources around the world, it has become a major topic of research to develop a high-efficiency, environmentally-friendly, low-cost energy conversion and storage system. The photocatalytic ability of three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical flower-like TiO2 structures has been extensively studied by researchers [26]. In this case, the nanoflower structure facilitates exposure of the specific surface area and an increase in the number of active sites. Carbon sphere templates affect the size of the hollow TiO2 structures, which caused a decrease in photocatalytic activity. From these new findings, we were really eager to develop a synthetic process for an easy fabrication of anatase TiO2 nanostructure having high specific surface area, so as to achieve efficient catalysis of pollutants. The results demonstrated that the flower-like TiO2 with 10 h reaction time exhibits the higher crystallinity and high photocatalytic activity for degradation of MB under UV-vis light irradiation
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