Issue 5, 2011

Porous TiO2 with a controllable bimodal pore size distribution from natural ilmenite

Abstract

Ilmenite (FeTiO3) is an inexpensive abundant natural mineral and it would be a perfect precursor for the production of porous TiO2 if a suitable synthesis method was developed. A new method combining a series of processing steps of ball milling, high-temperature annealing, selective chemical leaching and final calcining in air is proposed in this paper. The resulting TiO2 is a porous material with a bimodal pore structure. The pore size distribution has two clear maxima corresponding to small mesopores (2–30 nm) and large meso- and macropores (centered at around 50–80 nm). It was found that the duration of the annealing step could alter the contribution of each type of pores. A short annealing time (0.5 h) lead to the preferential formation of pores within 2–30 nm while pores centered at 50–80 nm dominated the pore size distribution after a relatively long annealing (1.5 h). The obtained porous rutile TiO2 shows a better photocatalytic activity than that of a commercial rutile TiO2 powder.

Graphical abstract: Porous TiO2 with a controllable bimodal pore size distribution from natural ilmenite

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 Aug 2010
Accepted
11 Oct 2010
First published
05 Nov 2010

CrystEngComm, 2011,13, 1322-1327

Porous TiO2 with a controllable bimodal pore size distribution from natural ilmenite

T. Tao, A. M. Glushenkov, Q. Chen, H. Hu, D. Zhou, H. Zhang, M. Boese, S. Liu, R. Amal and Y. Chen, CrystEngComm, 2011, 13, 1322 DOI: 10.1039/C0CE00533A

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