Preparation and Characterization of Cement-TiO2 Composites

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) is the most widely used photocatalyst because of its high photocatalytic activity and reasonably low cost. Moreover, TiO₂ has strong chemical stability in a large variety of environmental conditions. The combination of TiO₂ with cementatious materials has been widely investigated, and the effects of the TiO₂ contents (10-40% by weight) were studied in this research. The crystalline structures and chemical compositions were analyzed using x-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS), respectively. Moreover, its microstructure was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was found that the intensity of CS and CH decreased with an increase in the TiO₂ powder content. This was because when adding more TiO₂ powder to the composite system, more water was needed to add to the hydration reaction.