Titanium Dioxide Mesoporous Nanoparticles Modified By Poly(3-Hexyl Thiophene) With Enhanced Photocatalytic Property

Mesoporous materials has attracted much attention in recent years, because it not only can react with atoms, ions, molecules, and other nanoparticles on the surface, but also can occur in the interior of the pores, which increase the reaction area leads highly reaction rate. Mesoporous TiO2 is widely used in all aspects in our life due to its various advantages. However, a large band gap of TiO2 make it can only absorb part of ultraviolet light, which greatly limits the photocatalytic efficiency. Various modification methods were introduced to solve the problem, such as doped metal ions, non-metallic ion doping, conjugated polymer modification and so on.The main research contents and results were as follows:(1) Prepared mesoporous Ti O2 by sol-gel and hydrothermal method, which n-butyl titanate as titanium source, P123 and F127 as a template, according the data of TEM, TEM, SEM, XRD and N2 adsorption–desorption, we may find that the particles’ morphology are better, particle size are more uniform, the surface area are larger, even though mesopoous TiO2 which prepared by hydrothermal method are reunited and finally lead to the granularity increase. Weigh a certain amount of TiO2 to react with 10-6 M poly(3-hexylthiophene) to prepared TiO2/P3 HT nanocomposites via blending method. Characterized the nanocomposites by SEM, TEM, XRD, FTIR and XPS to test whether there are some difference after modification. From TEM, XRD, XPS and fourier transform infrared spectrum(FTIR) pictures and data, no significant difference between the TiO2 NPs and TiO2/P3 HT nanocomposites was observed, P3 HT are just simple physical adsorb on the surface of mesoporous TiO2.(2) The photocatalytic degradation reaction was taken in a closed reactor containing quantitative 10 mg·L-1 methyl orange(MO) solution under different light(visible, ultraviolet and sun). Ultraviolet spectrophotometer(UV) was used to measure the change in the concentration of MO. The adsorption activity were tested by adding 25 mL of MO solution and 0.15 g of photocatalyst(P3HT/TiO2 nanocomposites or TiO2 NPs) in round bottom flask wrapped close by black rubberized fabric, which can prevent the suspension from being irradiated by light. The results indicate that the decoration of P3 HT onto the surface of TiO2 NPs surface extended the photoresponse range of TiO2 NPs. The TiO2/P3 HT nanocomposites were proven to be effective to degrade MO under visible, UV and sun light illumination, repeated degradation of TiO2/P3 HT nanocomposites under sunlight is also very well, it can be applied in our life very well because it is affordable and it has high efficiency.(3) In order to test whether the photocatalytic properties of composite materials has widly application, we choose orange II as another model of organic pollutants, we obtain the same result, the TiO2/P3 HT nanocomposites can degrade orange II under visible, UV and sun light illumination, repeated experiment is also very well. So TiO2/P3 HT nanocomposites are well photocatalyst which can widly used in our life.