Synthesis of hierarchical ordered porous functional materials using willow wickers as templates for recyclable photo-catalytic applications

摘要

Using willow wickers as templates, we successfully synthesized hierarchically ordered TiO2 porous functional materials with perfectly replicated architectures by a sol-gel process. The main advantages of this route lie in that natural willow wickers with unique porous structures can provide much cheaper solutions to the synthesis of bulk ordered porous materials with desired functionalities. It is demonstrated that willow wickers can be used for the fabrication of hierarchically ordered materials and the original characteristics of wicker templates are almost intact and preserved after sol-gel process and carbonation. The morphologies and microstructures of the resulting structures are carefully investigated by means of SEM, TEM, XRD, and TG-DTA. A photo-catalytic test with our structures is performed to the degradation of methyl orange and high degradation rate is obtained. Due to the bulk features, all porous TiO2 structures can be recycled without causing secondary pollution.