Solvothermal synthesis of mesoporous TiO
2
microspheres
with tailored pore size and specific surface area
Yajing Zhang
1,3
•
Yuan Zhu
1
•
Kangjun Wang
1,3
•
Fu Ding
1,3
•
Dan Meng
1
•
Xiaolei Wang
2
•
Jing Wu
1
Published online: 1 May 2015
Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract Mesoporous TiO
2
microspheres with high
specific surface area were synthesized by a template-free
solvothermal method with the aid of u rea. The phase
structure, morphology, pore and optical properties were
characterized by XRD, SEM, N
2
adsorption–desorption
and UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectra. By controlling the
urea concentration, size, specific surface area, pore size and
optical property of the mesoporous TiO
2
microspheres can
be tune d.
Keywords Template-free Mesoporous TiO
2
microspheres
1 Introduction
TiO
2
has wide applications in photocatalysis, water split-
ting, gas sensor, energy conversion/storage, luminescence
film and Li-ion battery, etc. [ 1 –5 ]. In general, the properties
and performance of TiO
2
depend on its phase, crystallinity,
specific surface area, morphology and porosity [6]. Re-
cently, mesoporous TiO
2
microspheres, which are com-
posed of nanoscale primary units, attract great interest
because of its novel and enhanced properties due to their
micron size while maintaining or even increasing the
specific surface area [7]. For example, as an anode material
for lithium ion batteries, organizing TiO
2
nanoparticles into
microspheres was beneficial to the reversible storage of
Li
?
: the nanoscale crystallites which were the building
blocks support fast diffusion of Li
?
and electrons while
microspheres had large specific surface area, high tap
density, improv ed processability and good stress–strain
relief [8]. In dye sensitized solar cell, hierarchically me-
soporous TiO
2
spheres served as scattering layer and
showed enhanced photovoltaic performance, due to the
excellent scattering effect [9]. Mesoporous TiO
2
micro-
sphere composed of {010}-faceted nanobelts was an effi-
cient photocatalyst for H
2
evolution, and its activity was
more than twice that of the benchmark P25 TiO
2
. The
excellent photocatalytic performance of the material can be
attributed to the combination of a clean {010} active facet
and a high surface area [10]. Thus, considerable efforts
have been devot ed to the controlled synthesis of meso-
porous TiO
2
microspheres with tunable specific surface
area, size and pore size [11, 12].
Many methods have been developed for fabricating
mesoporous TiO
2
microspheres, including sol–gel [13],
hydrolysis [14], microemulsion [15], hydrothermal meth-
ods [16, 17], and most of them based on templating with
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this
article (doi:10.1007/s10934-015-9969-x) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
& Kangjun Wang
angle_79@163.com
& Fu Ding
dingfu@syuct.edu.cn
Yajing Zhang
yjzhang2009@163.com
1
College of Chemical Engineering, Shenyang University of
Chemical Technology, Shenyang 110142,
People’s Republic of China
2
School of Science, Shenyang University of Technology,
Shenyang 110870, People’s Republic of China
3
Liaoning Co-innovation Center of Fine Chemical Industry,
Shenyang 110142, People’s Republic of China
123
J Porous Mater (2015) 22:959–963
DOI 10.1007/s10934-015-9969-x