Hierarchically porous TiO2/SiO2 fibers with enhanced photocatalytic activity

Abstract

While TiO₂ nanoparticles are one of the most promising photocatalysts, their applications have been greatly hindered by easy aggregation. One of the effective routes to solve this problem is to incorporate them on/in a solid carrier. In this paper, we report the fabrication of hierarchically porous TiO₂/SiO₂ fibers via an electrospinning technique combined with subsequent high-temperature calcination treatment, in which the hierarchically porous SiO₂ fibers confer a platform to assemble TiO₂ nanoparticles with a uniform spatial distribution. The resultant hierarchically porous TiO₂/SiO₂ fibers have shown an enhanced photocatalytic activity with ∼95% degradation of rhodamine B as compared to ∼75% using our synthesized TiO₂ nanoparticles and ∼77% using commercially available Degussa P25 after 120 min illumination.