SDBS-assisted hydrothermal treatment of TiO2 with improved photocatalytic activity

To meet the practical application, it is still a challenge to prepare TiO2 with excellent photocatalytic performance. Therefore, in this work, TiO2 photocatalyst with enhanced sunlight-driven photocatalytic activity was facilely obtained after hydrothermal treatment of TiO2 with the assistance of sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS). TiO2 and SDBS-TiO2 were characterized by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method, X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), surface photovoltage (SPV) spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. The photocatalytic performance of the photocatalysts toward Rhodamine B (RhB) discolorization was evaluated. The results display that a much higher photo-induced charge separation rate, active free radicals and surface hydroxyl radical content were produced in the SDBS-TiO2 photocatalytic system. The results further reveal that the photocatalytic performance of SDBS-TiO2 is more than two times of that of the reference TiO2.