The facile synthesis of 3D hierarchical flower-like TiO2 microspheres with enhanced photocatalytic activity

Abstract

A 3D hierarchical flower-like rutile TiO2 microspheres assembled by well-aligned 1D nanorods were efficiently synthesized using the solvothermal method at a temperature of 140 °C for 5 h. The synthesized TiO2 microspheres have an average crystallite size of about 6.9–8.4 nm. According to SEM, FESEM and TEM analysis, flower-like TiO2 microspheres are made up of nanorods that grow radially from the center and are several nm thick on average. The XRD, EDS and XPS analysis revealed that titanium and oxygen peaks were present with no other impurity peaks. The volume ratio of water and toluene plays a vital role that was significantly affecting the chemical properties of synthesized TiO2 materials. Compared to other samples, the hierarchical 3D TiO2 microspheres Ti(1:1) had a small crystallite size, a lower bandgap, a comparatively large BET surface area of about 130 m2/g and a pore volume of 0.179 cm3/g, which revealed more favorable for photocatalytic activity. Ti(1:1) photocatalyst degraded MO by almost 96 and 94% within 50 and 40 min, respectively, when exposed to mercury light and sunlight. Also, it showed that within 60 min of mercury light irradiation, RhB degraded up to 65%. Additionally, an LC-MS study was performed for the degradation of MO dye solution and a possible degradation path was proposed.