Journal
RSC ADVANCES
Volume 4, Issue 81, Pages 43172-43177Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c4ra06565d
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Funding
- 973 Program [2014CB239302, 2011CB933303, 2013CB632404]
- National Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [BK2012015, BK 20130053]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [2147309, 51272101, 51202005]
- College Postgraduate Research and Innovation Project of Jiangsu Province [CXZZ13_0033]
- Provincial Science Key Foundation of Higher Education Institutions of Anhui [KJ2011A053]
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2012M521037]
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A particular TiO2 sponge, consisting of macroporous framework with interconnected mesoporous channels, was fabricated through a co-gelation of lotus root starch (LRS) with TiO2 precursor, followed by lyophilization and subsequent calcination. This strategy advantageously inherits both the traditional hard-templating technique for well-defined 3D predesigned macroporous architecture and soft-templating techniques for interpore connectivity. The resulting TiO2 sponge exhibits about a 2.60 fold improvement in CO2 photoconversion rate (CH4: 5.13 ppm h(-1)) compared to the referred TiO2 (1.97 ppm h(-1)) formed in the absence of the LRS. The generation rate of CH4 over macro/mesoporous TiO2 sponge could be further significantly enhanced to 11.95 ppm h(-1) by co-loading Pt (0.9 wt%) and Cu (1.7 wt%) as co-catalysts by improvement of the separations of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs. The higher photocatalytic activity of the macro/mesoporous TiO2 sponge can be attributed to the following three reasons: (1) macroporous architecture favors gas diffusion of the reactants and the products; (2) macroporous architecture also promotes the multiple-reflection effect occurring inside the interior macrocavities, which enables trapping (or harvest) the incident light in the photocatalyst for a longer duration and bring forth more opportunities for light absorption; and (3) the mesoporous structure enhances gas capture/adsorption of the reactants and provides more reaction sites.
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