Morphology-controlled synthesis of TiO2 nanostructures for environmental application

• A simple and facile approach for the preparation of shape-tailored TiO2 nano-materials was demonstrated.
• Octadecyldimethyl (3-trimethoxy silylpropyl) ammonium chloride was taken as the template for the self-assembly process.
• The size and shape of TiO2 can be simply tuned by modulating the pH by 1 M NaOH.
• Catalytic activity of the size and shape controlled TiO2 was evaluated in the photocatalytic dye degradation.
• The TiO2 nanostrips exhibit the highest catalytic activity and showed > 90% degradation efficacy.

Uniform free standing TiO2 nanostructure with different shapes was extensively prepared by a template assisted hydrothermal method by controlling the pH and using Ti[OCH(CH3)2]4 as the titanium source. {101} and {200} planes of TiO2 were found to be the preferentially exposed active crystal planes for both nanospheres and nanostrips TiO2. The newly synthesised TiO2 materials were found to be very efficient for the photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants in industrial wastewater.

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