Citric Acid Regulated Fabrication of Macroporous TiO2

Rui Chen,Ningning Shao,Tiehong Chen,Xiaoquan Zhou

doi:10.3390/surfaces3010006

Abstract

Macroporous TiO2 monolith was prepared by a microphase separation method. After citric acid was added to the synthesis procedure, the yield of the titanium precursor has been significantly increased, and the stability of macroporous structure can be obviously enhanced. Anatase and rutile phase of TiO2 were obtained after a 550 °C and 800 °C calcination, respectively.

Highlights

As one of the important inorganic materials, titanium oxide, has proven to be a safe, nontoxic chemical, and TiO2 has been widely used in catalysis, optical coatings, gas sensing, lithium ion batteries [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
It can be seen that the product is composed of lots of blocks in micrometer size with irregular shapes, and higher magnification picture shows that few blocks in micrometer size with irregular shapes, and higher magnification picture shows that few of of the blocks incompletely formed porous structure (Figure 1b), which shows that the precursor has the blocks incompletely formed porous structure (Figure 1b), which shows that the precursor has a a tendency to form three-dimensional macroporous pores in ethanol/water solution, but does not tendency to form three-dimensional macroporous pores in ethanol/water solution, but does not form form a stable macroporous pore structure in a wide range
We reported a citric stabilized preparation of microporous-macroporous titanium dioxide

Summary

Introduction

As one of the important inorganic materials, titanium oxide, has proven to be a safe, nontoxic chemical, and TiO2 has been widely used in catalysis, optical coatings, gas sensing, lithium ion batteries [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Owing to its good chemical and physical properties, TiO2 with different morphologies and structures, such as quantuam dots, microspheres, nanorods, nanowires, nanoplate, and hierarchical. It is well known that catalysts with porous structures will provide high surface area, more active site, and easy for mass transfer. TiO2 with mesoporous, macroporous and hierarchical porous structures have been reported, Wu. et al reported a hard template method to fabricate a connected three-dimensional ordered macroporous (3DOM) materials, polystyrene (PS) colloid was used as a template in an ethanol/water mixed solution of citric acid [23]. The hard template method was further developed to synthesis a TiO2 -carbon nanocomposite in a three dimensionally ordered macroporous framework with a pore-hierarchical structure [24]

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion