Hydrothermal Synthesis of Potassium Hexatitanate Photocatalyst under Supercritical Water Conditions

Hydrothermal synthesis of potassium hexatitanate (KTO) was carried out under supercritical water conditions. Characterization of the hydrothermally synthesized (ht-) KTO samples by XRD and TEM revealed that fibrous materials can be obtained with the crystal growth in the direction of (010) . To determine the optimum Ru loading for highly active photocatalyst, Ru ion exchange on the ht-KTO was examined with the variation of RuCl3 concentration. The maximum photocatalytic activity of RuO2 loaded ht-KTO was achieved when the Ru loading was 1.0wt% which was much higher in comparison with the solid-state synthesized KTO.