Contribution of the lamellar morphology to the photocatalytic activity of alkaline-hydrothermally treated titania in rhodamine B photodegradation

TiO 2 particles with a specific morphology are essential for their accessibility and photoactivity. The present study shows that NH 4 OH-based alkaline-hydrothermal treatment affects the transformation of their particle morphology. We investigated the effect of NH 4 OH by varying the synthesis route. We observed that the TiO 2 particles with an open channel pore structure only resulted in the alkaline-hydrothermally treated and calcined samples. Based on Raman and XRD analyses, we figured out the titanate layers as an intermediate phase resulting from the alkaline-hydrothermal treatment of the amorphous particles. The hydrothermal treatment changed the particle surface morphology into a lamellar structure with a high specific surface area. These are the anatase precursors with {200} planes that transform into the anatase phase after calcination. The calcination followed by alkaline-hydrothermal treatment converted the crystallinity without significantly changing their morphology. We found that the morphology of TiO 2 particles can be modified via hydrothermal treatment using NH 4 OH as long as the particles remain uncrystallized. We suggested the modification of particle morphology through the swelling and phase segregation process by alkaline-hydrothermal treatment. All final products have been used for the photodegradation of rhodamine B. S-HT-500 and A-HT-500 show the best photocatalytic activity with their rate constants ( k ) of 47.9 and 30.9 × 10 −2 min −1 , and their surface area-normalized rate constants ( k sa ) of 6.5 and 2.6 × 10 −3 L m −2 min −1 , respectively, and have a photocatalytic efficiency of 90.93% and 67.78%, respectively, after 10 minutes of UV irradiation. This activity is approximately 3.5 times and 1.5 times higher than that of Degussa P25; 30 times and 20 times higher than that without a photocatalyst. This study comprehensively describes the structure, crystal growth mechanism, and photodegradation performance of anatase particles with lamellar morphology produced by alkaline hydrothermal treatment on uncrystallized TiO 2 particles.