Grafting TiO2 nanoparticles onto carbon fiber via “thiol-ene” click chemistry and its photodegradation performance for methyl orange

In this article, we presented a novel and facile method for obtaining a photocatalyst of carbon fiber grafted with TiO2 (CF-TiO2) via “thiol-ene” click chemistry. The as-prepared CF-TiO2 was characterized by FT-IR, TGA, SEM, TEM and XRD. The results demonstrate the successful grafting of TiO2 onto the CF surface and the grafting content of TiO2 is about 9%. The photocatalytic activity of CF-TiO2 was evaluated by measuring the photodegradation of methyl orange (MO) under UV irradiation. The photodegradation rate of CF-TiO2 (89%) is significantly higher than that of pure CF (5.4%) and pure TiO2 (56%). In addition, the photostability test of CF-TiO2 demonstrates that it is reusable and stable due to strong covalent bonds between CF and TiO2.