Issue 52, 2018, Issue in Progress

Polyacrylamide exotemplate-assisted synthesis of hierarchically porous nanostructured TiO2 macrobeads for efficient photodegradation of organic dyes and microbes

Abstract

Nano/microscale TiO2 materials and their composites have reached the pinnacle of their photocatalytic performances to destroy persistent organic pollutants and waterborne microorganisms, but their practical applications are limited by the drawbacks associated with their stability, leaching, processing and separation. To overcome these shortcomings, we have prepared hierarchically porous nanostructured TiO2 macrobeads via an exotemplating or nanocasting strategy by infiltrating the TiO2 sol into the emulsion-templated porous polyacrylamide scaffold followed by its gelation, drying and calcination. The nanoscale TiO2 building units tailor the shape of the porous polymeric network after calcination thereby retaining the macroscale morphology of polymer beads after template removal. A novel combination of the hierarchical macroporosity, orderly crystalline anatase nature, nanoscale feature and good surface area revealed by the relevant characterization tools makes these TiO2 scaffolds particularly effective for superior degradation of methylene blue with the enhanced rate constant and efficient disinfection of E. coli and S. aureus under UV light. The macrosize and mechanical stability of these purely TiO2 beaded architectures have several potential advantages over conventional TiO2 nanocomposites and slurry systems to address the inherent bottlenecks of secondary contamination, difficult operation and energy-intensive post-recovery processes that are indeed deemed to be the barriers to develop practically useful water treatment technologies.

Graphical abstract: Polyacrylamide exotemplate-assisted synthesis of hierarchically porous nanostructured TiO2 macrobeads for efficient photodegradation of organic dyes and microbes

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
22 Jul 2018
Accepted
15 Aug 2018
First published
21 Aug 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2018,8, 29628-29636

Polyacrylamide exotemplate-assisted synthesis of hierarchically porous nanostructured TiO2 macrobeads for efficient photodegradation of organic dyes and microbes

M. A. Mudassir, S. Z. Hussain, M. Khan, S. T. Asma, Z. Iqbal, Z. Huma, N. Ullah, H. Zhang, T. M. Ansari and I. Hussain, RSC Adv., 2018, 8, 29628 DOI: 10.1039/C8RA06197A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements