Tartaric acid-assisted preparation and photocatalytic performance of titania nanoparticles with controllable phases of anatase and brookite

摘要

Titanium dioxide with different ratios of anatase to brookite has been prepared by a facile hydrothermal method in the presence of tartaric acid. The resulting samples were investigated by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectra, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis. The contents of anatase and brookite in the TiO _2 particles have been successfully controlled by simply adjusting molar ratio of tartaric acid to Ti in reaction system. The degradation of Rhodamine B in aqueous solutions reveals that the catalyst containing 78.7 % anatase and 21.3 % brookite has the highest photocatalytic activity. A proposed mechanism is discussed to interpret the evolution of the phases based on the effect of different C _4H _6O _6/Ti molar ratios.