Abstract
The amount of photocatalysts loaded on the supporting materials and their bonding configuration by physical or chemical mode have great effects on the photocatalytic properties and stabilities of the photocatalytic composites in practical application. However, to our knowledge, the influence of the crystal structure of support material on the photocatalytic performance of the resultant photocatalysts has never been studied till now. Herein, four polymorphic cotton fibers (cellulose Iβ, II, IIII and IVI) were utilized as the support to load anatase TiO2 nanoparticles by a hydrothermal method. The structural changes of cotton fibers before and after loading TiO2 were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermal gravimetric analysis, X-ray photoelectron, diffuse reflectance and photoluminescence spectroscopies. Their photocatalytic properties were examined towards the photodegradation of the model Congo red (CR) dye under visible light illumination. Results indicate that the crystalline structure of cotton cellulose affects the loading dosage of anatase TiO2 nanoparticles on cotton fibers and the doping ratio of C, N and O elements in TiO2, which results in the differences of the degradation rates of CR dye over the TiO2 modified cotton fibers. Because the TiO2 hydrothermal modification makes the crystallinity and orientation degree of cotton cellulose II decrease, the cotton cellulose II fibers might load more TiO2 nanoparticles than the other three cotton cellulose fibers via the bonds of C-Ti3+/Ti4+, N-Ti3+/Ti4+ and O-Ti3+/O-Ti4+. This leads to a narrowed band-gap of the resultant composites which exhibit a high photocatalytic activity for the photodegradation of CR dye. The density functional theory calculations demonstrate that the different crystalline structures of cotton cellulose I, II, and IVI affect the densities of state of C, N and O co-doped TiO2, thus resulting in various band-gaps.
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This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51873169), the International Science and Technology Cooperation Project of Shaanxi Province (2020KW-069), and the Sanqin Scholar Foundation (2017).
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Li, W., Zhang, H., Song, Y. et al. Effect of the crystalline structure of cotton cellulose on the photocatalytic activities of cotton fibers immobilized with TiO2 nanoparticles. Cellulose 29, 6441–6459 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04663-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04663-x