Preparation and hydrogenation of urchin-like titania using a one-step hydrothermal method

TiO2 has been widely used in the fields of environmental protection, energy conversion, plastics, coatings, cosmetics, and more. However, it has a wide band gap (3.2 eV) and the easy agglomeration of TiO2 nanoparticles hinders its application. This study adopts a one-step hydrothermal method to prepare urchin-like TiO2 photocatalyst and studies the morphology of TiO2 in relation to hydrothermal time, hydrothermal temperature and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) amount. In addition, the urchin-like TiO2 is annealed in hydrogen atmosphere to discuss the influence of oxygen vacancies on the band gap and photocatalytic performance improvement.