Multichannel TiO2 hollow fibers with enhanced photocatalytic activity

This work describes that the photocatalytic activity of microsized TiO2 fibers for degrading gaseous acetaldehyde can be systematically enhanced by introducing nanostructured interior hollow channels, which is achieved by a facile multifluidic electrospinning method. The increased channel number augments the BET surface area of TiO2 fibers intuitively. A quite interesting phenomenon is that the percentage increase for photocatalytic activity is higher than that for surface area. It is thus proposed that the multichannel hollow structures induce not only an inner trap effect on gaseous molecules, but also a multiple-reflection effect on incident light, which further improves the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 hollow fibers.