Synthesis, characterization and photoactivity of bi-crystalline mesoporous TiO2

Mesoporous titania （meso-TiO2） has received extensive attention owing to its versatile potential applications. This paper reports a low-temperature templating approach for the fabrication of meso-TiO2 using the peroxo titanic acid （PTA） sol as precursor and Pluronic P123 as nonionic template. The TGA, XRD, N2 sorption, FE-SEM and HRTEM were used to characterize the obtained samples. The results showed that meso-TiO2 with high surface area up to 163 m2.g^-1 and large pore volume of 0.65 cm3.^-1 can be obtained. The mesopore sizes can be varied between 13 and 20 nm via this synthesis approach. The amount of P123 and the calcination conditions were found to have great influence on the mesoporous and crystalline structures of meso-TiO2. The photocatalytic activity testing clearly shows that the high surface area and bi-crystallinity phases of meso-TiO2 play important roles in enhancing photocatalytic properties of meso-TiO2 in photo-decomposing Rhodamine B in water.