Formation of rod-like nanostructure by aggregation of TiO2 nanoparticles with improved performances

To improve the performance of titanium dioxide (TiO 2 )-based devices, many efforts have been made to prepare nanostructures with composite of TiO 2 nanoparticles and nanorods. In this work, a novel rod-like TiO 2 nanostructure was obtained via a controllable hydrolysis process. Morphology and structure analysis showed that the rod-like nanostructure was a well-aligned aggregate of nearly spherical TiO 2 nanoparticles. Rod-like TiO 2 nanoparticle aggregates were fabricated on a primary TiO 2 nanoparticle-based layer without the use of template, and formed a hierarchical TiO 2 composite film together. The photocatalytic activity of the TiO 2 film with rod-like nanoparticle aggregates was evaluated by the degradation of methylene blue. The antibacterial activity of fabricated hierarchical TiO 2 film was assessed against Staphylococcus aureus . The photoelectrochemical property of this film as the photoanode in assemble dye-sensitized solar cell was also tested. Compared with randomly distributed nanoparticle-based TiO 2 film, the hierarchical TiO 2 film exhibited improved performance of photocatalysis, antibacterial activity and photoelectric conversion.