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Sonochemical fabrication of morpho-genetic TiO2 with hierarchical structures for photocatalyst

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Abstract

Titanium oxides (TiO2) with hierarchical structures have been successfully replicated from biotemplate using a sonochemical method. The bio-templates, cedarwoods, were irradiated under ultrasonic waves in TiCl4 solutions and then calcined at temperatures between 450 and 600 °C. The fine replications of the biotemplates in TiO2 down to nanometer’s level were verified using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The photocatalytic activities were assessed by measuring the percentage degradation of methylene blue using UV–vis spectroscopy. The calcination temperature has a strong effect on the structural replication and photocatalytic activity of the replicas. It appears that the calcination temperature of 450 °C results in the best structural replication with the highest surface area of 54.8 m2 g−1, and thus has the best photocatalytic properties. This method provides a simple, efficient, and versatile technique for fabricating TiO2 with hierarchical structures, and it has the potential to be applied to other systems for producing functional hierarchical materials for chemical sensor and nanodevices.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of this research by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 50573013, 50772067), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University, Shanghai Science and Technology Committee (06PJ14063, 07DJ14001), and Sino-French Project of MOST of China (No. 2009DFA52410). We also thank SJTU Instrument Analysis Center for the measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200240, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Shenmin Zhu, Di Zhang, Gang Zhou, Haibo Jiang & Jinlong Li

  2. The Faculty of Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Zhixin Chen

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  1. Shenmin Zhu
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  2. Di Zhang
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  3. Zhixin Chen
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  4. Gang Zhou
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Correspondence to Shenmin Zhu.

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Zhu, S., Zhang, D., Chen, Z. et al. Sonochemical fabrication of morpho-genetic TiO2 with hierarchical structures for photocatalyst. J Nanopart Res 12, 2445–2456 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-009-9807-7

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