Facile Synthesis of Thermo-responsive TiO2/PNIPAM Composite with Switchable Photocatalytic Performance

摘要

In this paper, a facile and efficient method was performed to prepare the thermo-responsive Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)/TiO2 (TiO2/PNIPAM) with the dispersing of TiO2 nanoparticles into PNIPAM. The structures of nanoparticles and the grafted polymer were confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectra, Fourier transform infrared spectra (FT-IR) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS). The interactions between the two components were studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and the morphology of TiO2/PNIPAM was observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that TiO2 exhibited homogeneous dispersion, without sacrificing the properties of TiO2. Furthermore, The composite was used to photocatalytic degradation of Methylene blue (MB). The highest MB removal efficiency is 86.3 %. The photocatalytic activities above or below the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of PNIPAM was also investigated. The experiment results show that the existence of PNIPAM contributed not only the thermo-responsive abilities to TiO2, but also the enhanced photocatalytic activities to TiO2. In addition, the corresponding mechanism of enhanced photocatalytic activity was proposed. The results manifest that the well-designed TiO2/PNIPAM is a promising candidate in wastewater treatment application.