Comparing the photocatalytic property of TiO 2 nanoparticles and structured nanofiber materials

Abstract

In this work, TiO2 nanofibers (TiO2-NF) with multilevel structure and nanoparticles (TiO2-NP) were respectively prepared via template-assisted and single solvothermal methods. The degradation of methylene blue (MB) was used as the model reaction to evaluate the photocatalytic properties of these prepared materials. It was important that TiO2-NF, prepared via template-assisted solvothermal method, possessed multilevel structure. The photocatalytic results indicated that their activity order was TiO2-NF > TiO2-NP. It demonstrated that the multilevel structure of TiO2-NF played an important role for enhancing its photocatalytic activity and the enhanced property could be mainly ascribed to fast adsorption/desorption of MB molecules on its surface and high efficiency of absorbing irradiating light and the efficient electrons transfer by interparticles and interparticles to the wall of the fiber.