Application of tetrahydrofuran dispersant in microemulsion for fabricating titania mesoporous thin film

A new strategy was used to fabricate titania mesoporous thin film by incorporating tetrahydrofuran (THF) into the CTAB/n-butyl alcohol/cyclohexane/water reverse microemulsion as a micelle disperser. Highly dispersed and congregated TiO2 particles in the microemulsion with and without THF were observed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), respectively. The photographs observed by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) show that a uniform titania mesoporous thin film with monodisperse TiO2 spherical nanoparticles of ca. 20 nm was obtained using the microemulsion with THF.

Graphical abstractIn the quaternary microemulsion, incorporating THF is able to disperse the reverse micelles before the hydrolysis of tetrabutyl titanate occurs in the water cores. Hence the resulting TiO2 nano-particles are spheres and highly dispersed in the microemulsion, which improves the morphology of TiO2 mesoporous thin film.