A simple UV-ozone surface treatment to enhance photocatalytic performance of TiO2 loaded polymer nanofiber membranes

Homogeneously dispersed titanium dioxide loaded polyacrylonitrile nanofiber membranes with increased active mass loading, Ti3+ surface defects and hydrophilicity were fabricated by combining electro-spinning and UV-ozone surface treatment. The photocatalytic activity improved by a factor of similar to 2 and the kinetics of photodegradation switched from pseudo-first order to pseudo-second order with increasing TiO2 content with a maximum rate constant of 20.7 h(-1).