One-pot synthesis of oleic acid modified monodispersed mesoporous TiO2 nanospheres with enhanced visible light photocatalytic performance

Abstract

Herein, we report a facile one-pot solvothermal method to prepare unique oleic acid (OA) modified monodispersed mesoporous TiO2 nanospheres with carboxylate ligands from the oleic acid in the bidentate chelating linkage mode. The mesoporous OA-TiO2 nanospheres have a very large specific surface of nearly 510 m2/g. The oleic acid cannot only act as a binding ligand to control the shape of mesoporous TiO2 nanospheres, but also be benefit to enhance the visible-light absorption. The mesoporous OA-TiO2 nanospheres exhibit an excellent photocatalytic performance in the degradation of Rhodamine B and phenol under the visible light irradiation and show almost no attenuation after four cycles.