Double-layered hierarchical titanate and its attaching and splitting mechanism

Abstract

Abstract Double-layered hierarchical titania materials exhibit outstanding properties. However, most hydrothermal synthesis methods of bilayer hierarchical titania materials are time-consuming and high alkali-consuming. In this study, a less alkali-consuming one-pot method was developed to synthesize bilayer hierarchical titanate, specifically, 1D nanoarray layer and 3D hierarchical layer. Morphologies of the composites can be manipulated by varying hydrothermal conditions and introducing titanate nuclei based on the attachment rule and splitting mechanism. More importantly, splitting phenomena were observed and confirmed in both nanosheet-to-nanowire transformation process and nanowire-to-nanotube transformation process. It was firstly confirmed that the driving force of the splitting process is the transformation from amorphous state titanate to crystalline state titanate.