Mesoporous titania with anatase walls by flash induction calcination

• Ordered mesoporous titania with anatase framework in short synthesis time.
• Simultaneous surfactant removal and wall crystallization by flash induction.
• Photocatalytic activity towards methyl orange degradation.
• Materials with similar properties than the ones obtained by conventional calcination.

Induction heating has been used to thermally treat mesostructured TiO2 with hexagonal 2D structure prepared by a combined Liquid Crystalline Template (LCT) and Evaporation Induced Self-Assembly (EISA) synthesis method. Induction treatment induces the decomposition of the structuring agent P123 and the formation of anatase. Highly ordered mesoporous titania with a semi crystalline framework can be obtained very fast, i.e. 5 min at 460 °C or 15 min at 300 °C. The recovered materials have similar structural, textural properties and photoactivity towards the decomposition of methyl orange than the mesostructured TiO2 obtained after ethanol extraction followed by a calcination at 400 °C in a conventional furnace.

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