Materials Science & Engineering

Biography

Biography: Elena Cerro-Prada

Abstract

Incorporation of nanostructured chemically inert semiconductors with photocatalytic properties into cementitious materials is an important development in the field of heterogeneous photocatalytic pollution mitigation. Here we report a new composite material consisting of TiO2 nanocrystals grown via sol-gel method at ambient temperature and undergone calcination in order to increase their crystallinity. On gelation of the ambient temperature prepared sols, dispersed nanoparticles of amorphous TiO2 were obtained by titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) route. The amorphous materials obtained transformed to fully crystalline titania at 400 °C. The effect of calcination temperature was evaluated. The high temperature thermal stabilities of this novel material were also studied. The prepared TiO2 photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The contents of anatase and rutile phases in the TiO2 sols have been successfully controlled by simple thermal annealing. The active photocatalytic sites related to the surface area of TiO2 are the key factor in determining the photocatalytic activity [1]. The as-prepared nanoparticles are expected to show an enhanced photocatalytic activity under UVlight irradiation, which can be attributed to the porous structure, large BET surface area, bicrystalline, and small crystallite size.