Aging dependent phase transformation of mesostructured titanium dioxide nanomaterials prepared by evaporation-induced self-assembly process: Implications for solar hydrogen production

Abstract

Mesostructured titanium dioxide materials were prepared by Evaporation-Induced Self-Assembly (EISA) method using titanium isopropoxide and a cationic surfactant. The titania phase could be tuned by simply varying the aging time. As the aging time increased, hierarchically structured mesoporous materials with mixed phases of titania were obtained. The rutile content was found to generally increase with length in aging time. The mesostructured materials were evaluated for hydrogen production, and a mixed phase consisting of 95% anatase and 5% rutile showed the highest activity. This study indicates that the aging time is an important parameter for the preparation of mesostructured materials with hierarchical porosities and mixed phase(s) of titania.

Keywords

• evaporation-induced self-assembly
• titanium dioxide
• solar hydrogen
• porous materials
• phase transformation