Hierarchical Porous TiO2 Fibre Synthesized by Cotton Template and its Photocatalytic Performance

Hierarchical porous TiO₂ fibre was successfully synthesized using cotton as template. Microstructures of product were characterized by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM), nitrogen absorption-desorption technique and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Titanium oxide material was characterized by repetitious networks consisting of the fibres with diameter of ca. 3-8 μm. The results showed that the products were composed 2-5 nm piled pores stacked by polycrystalline TiO₂ nanoparticles. The small crystallite diameter (6-10 nm) and the high specific surface area (83.7 m²·g^-1) of sample was believed to be resulted from wide-angle X-ray Diffraction (XRD), high resolution TEM (HRTEM) and the BET method. While the concentration of methylthionine chloride solution was 20 mg/L, catalyst amount 0.1 g/L, the reaction had a higher decoloring rate following irradiation with a UV light source, the decoloring rate can reach over 100% after 250 min.