P123 and solvent-assisted synthesis of titania nanocuboids with co-exposed {101} and {001} planes

Abstract

A surfactant-assisted method is reported here for the successful synthesis of mesoporous assembled titania nanostructures. The surfactant used here is a non-ionic triblock copolymer, P123, which plays a dual role: controls the oriented growth assembly of nanostructures and acts as templates for the formation of a mesoporous structure. The coexistence of active exposed planes on the mesoporous anatase titania is noticed, which is a result of a dual solvent-assisted mechanism, the very first observation in this direction. The mesoporous nature of the sample is confirmed by low angle XRD and the nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherm. The obtained mesopores possess a uniform pore size and the average pore diameter of 17.4 nm. Such a large pore width for mesoporous titania using the P123 template is reported rarely in the literature. The photocatalytic activity of the structure is commendable as proved by the decomposition of methylene blue dye. The activity is seen far higher than that of similar works reported previously under identical experimental conditions.