Room Temperature Synthesis of Ti-MCM-48 and Ti-MCM-41 Mesoporous Materials and Their Performance on Photocatalytic Splitting of Water

摘要

Two sets of titania containing MCM-48 and MCM-41 photo-catalysts were prepared at room temperature. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), nitrogen adsorption isotherms, UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy were utilized to characterize the Ti-MCM-48 and Ti-MCM-41 mesoporous materials. The photocatalytic hydrogen evolution results carried out under UV light irradiation indicated that the photocatalytic activity decreased with an increase of Ti loading in Ti-MCM-48 and Ti-MCM-41 samples. The photocatalytic activity was found to be dependent on the coordination of Ti and most importantly on the pore geometry, that is, cubic MCM-48 with interpenetrating network of pores exhibiting higher activity than uni-dimensional hexagonal pores in MCM-41.