Preparation and photocatalytic activity of nanocrystalline TiO2 with uniform shape and size

A novel and facile synthetic route was proposed to synthesize the uniform nanocrystalline TiO2 (nc-TiO2) through an evaporation-induced assembly (EIA) approach, utilizing the block copolymer as the uniform-structure-directing agent. Furthermore, a systematic study on the effect of calcination temperature on the photocatalytic activity of rhodamine TiO2 was also presented in this paper. Thermogravimetric analysis/different scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, nitrogen sorption and UV–vis absorption spectroscopy were used to characterize the obtained nc-TiO2 samples. The results showed that an optimum calcination temperature of photocatalytic activity of nanocrystalline TiO2 catalyst was 500 °C. In addition, the as-prepared nc-TiO2 materials show higher photocatalytic activity compared with the conventional TiO2 (P25 Degussa).