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Facile and controllable preparation of mesoporous TiO2 using poly(ethylene glycol) as structure-directing agent and peroxotitanic acid as precursor

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Abstract

This work demonstrated that mesoporous TiO2 (meso-TiO2) with controllable mesoporous and crystalline structures can be facilely prepared by using poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) as structure-directing (SD) agent and peroxotitanic acid (PTA) as precursor. Meso-TiO2 with high specific surface area (157 m2∙g-1), pore volume (0.45 cm3∙g-1) and large mesopore size of 13.9 nm can be obtained after calcination at 450°C. Such meso-TiO2 also shows relatively high thermal stability. BET surface area still reaches 114 m2∙g-1 after calcination at 550°C. In the synthesis and calcination process, PEG that plays multiple and important roles in delivering thermally stable and tunable mesoporous and crystalline structures shows to be a suitable low-cost SD agent for the controllable preparation of nanocrystalline meso-TiO2. The photocatalytic activity tests show that both high surface area and bi-crystallinity of obtained meso-TiO2 are important in enhancing the performance in photo-decomposing Rhodamine B in water.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Anisotropy and Texture of Materials (Ministry of Education), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, China

    Dongthanh Nguyen, Wei Wang, Haibo Long & Hongqiang Ru

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  1. Dongthanh Nguyen
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  2. Wei Wang
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  3. Haibo Long
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  4. Hongqiang Ru
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Correspondence to Wei Wang.

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Nguyen, D., Wang, W., Long, H. et al. Facile and controllable preparation of mesoporous TiO2 using poly(ethylene glycol) as structure-directing agent and peroxotitanic acid as precursor. Front. Mater. Sci. 10, 405–412 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11706-016-0352-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11706-016-0352-x

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