A self-cleaning coating material of TiO2 porous microspheres/cement composite with high-efficient photocatalytic depollution performance

In this letter, we developed a self-cleaning coating material through simply blending the TiO2 porous microspheres (PMS) with the commercial cement. The TiO2 PMS with the diameters around 500 nm were synthesized by an ultrasonic spray pyrolysis method. During the photocatalytic depollution tests, the as prepared TiO2 PMS/cement composite was processed into a hardened micro-film coated on the glass substrate via a doctor blade method. Upon UV-Vis light irradiation, the TiO2 PMS/cement composite film exhibited the higher photocatalytic activity as compared to the conventional P25/cement composite film. This can be attributed to the fact that the unique micro-nano hierarchical porous structure of TiO2 PMS not only boosts the light harvesting ability, but also provides more active sites for the photocatalytic reaction. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.