Wet-Chemical Preparation of TiO2-Based Composites with Different Morphologies and Photocatalytic Properties

Abstract

TiO2-based composites have been paid significant attention in the photocatalysis field. The size, crystallinity and nanomorphology of TiO2 materials have an important effect on the photocatalytic efficiency. The synthesis and photocatalytic activity of TiO2-based materials have been widely investigated in past decades. Based on our group’s research works on TiO2 materials, this review introduces several methods for the fabrication of TiO2, rare-earth-doped TiO2 and noble-metal-decorated TiO2 particles with different morphologies. We focused on the preparation and the formation mechanism of TiO2-based materials with unique structures including spheres, hollow spheres, porous spheres, hollow porous spheres and urchin-like spheres. The photocatalytical activity of urchin-like TiO2, noble metal nanoparticle-decorated 3D (three-dimensional) urchin-like TiO2 and bimetallic core/shell nanoparticle-decorated urchin-like hierarchical TiO2 are briefly discussed.

One-Step Acidic Hydrothermal Preparation of Dendritic Rutile TiO2 Nanorods for Photocatalytic Performance

“…Combined with SEM ( Figure 9 ), the specific surface area and number of active sites of the nanorods are gradually reduced when the reaction time exceeds 12 h. Finally, the samples showed photocatalytic performance with a degradation rate of 71.00% ± 2.43%. At the same time, the TiO 2 nanorods in our research study have similar photocatalytic performance compared with some previous researchers' photocatalytic studies such as D’Amato et al [ 33 ] and Xiang et al [ 34 ]. In contrast to Chen et al [ 35 ], a 500 W high pressure mercury lamp could be used as one of the experimental conditions for studying photocatalytic performance.…”

Metal oxide nanostructures for sensor applications

“…Several techniques have been reported to produce TiO2 nanostructures or thin films including sol-gel method [201], wet-chemical techniques [202,203], thermal evaporation [204], sputtering [205], electrodeposition [206], hydrothermal and solvothermal synthesis [207][208][209][210], microwave irradiation [10,192] TiO2 is known to be an inexpensive material, earth abundant, chemically stable, nontoxic, biocompatible, and environmentally friendly [203,214], which makes it prone to be applied in numerous fields, including solar cells [25,215,216], self-cleaning [217,218], photocatalysis [9,10,192], H2 production [219], CO2 reduction [220,221], sensors [222][223][224], among others. Anatase is the preferred phase for solar cell integration since it has high electron mobility, low dielectric constant and lower density [225,226].…”

Design, Synthesis, and Structure-Property Relationships of Er3+-Doped TiO2 Luminescent Particles Synthesized by Sol-Gel

“…Among the different synthesis methods employed for the fabrication of the TiO 2 particles, the sol-gel synthesis method has been demonstrated to allow a reliable and precise control of particle size and morphology [20,21,22,23]. The incorporation of rare-earth ions into the TiO 2 nano-particles has drawn noticeable interest in recent times, demonstrating the potential of this type of material [24,25].…”