A Tremella-like Mesoporous Calcium Silicate Loaded by TiO₂ with Robust Adsorption and Photocatalytic Degradation Capabilities

Abstract

A titanium dioxide loaded tremella-like mesoporous calcium silicate hydrate (TiO₂@CSH) with both adsorption and photocatalytic degradation activity was successfully prepared by a hydrothermal method combined with sol-gel strategy in two steps in this work. Tremella-shaped CSH provides abundant active sites for accommodating of TiO₂, thus the corresponding TiO₂@CSH achieved a high loading ratio of 36.73%. Such a special shaped TiO₂@CSH exhibits excellent pre-enrichment capacity and photocatalytic degradation capacity for organic pollutants. Bisphenol A (BPA) removal experiments show that TiO₂@CSH can remove 91.17% of BPA from aqueous solutions. Studies on removal mechanism suggest that BPA tends to bind on the interface between CSH and TiO₂ and the pre-enrichment process conforms to the intraparticle diffusion model; and then, it is decomposed to harmless substances of CO₂ and H₂O during the photocatalytic process. The experimental results show that loading functional nanoparticles such as TiO₂ on the surface of inorganic porous materials can endow inert porous materials with new functions such as photocatalytic degradation, which effectively expands the application range of inorganic porous materials.

Keywords

TiO₂@CSH / adsorption / photocatalytic degradation / synergetic mechanism