Ethanol dissolution-assisted synthesis of ordered mesostructured titania spheres

Mesostructured titania has been extensively used in the fields of photocatalysis and photoelectronic devices, thus creating a highly ordered mesostructure of spherical titania particles is expected to be a promising strategy to enhance the performance. This study present a new method to synthesize mesostructured titania, with a well-ordered hexagonal structure and a spherical morphology by the optimization of surfactant-templating cooperative assembly and re-dissolution in ethanol. The synthesized ordered mesostructured titania spheres (denoted as OMTS) were characterized with small-angle X-ray diffraction (SA-XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and transmission electron microscope (TEM). We found that the OMTS adopt a spherical morphology (diameter of around 1 £gm) and well-ordered two-dimensional hexagonal structure. In addition, this method allows the introduction of other metal oxide species (such as Al or Zr) into the OMTS, which can potentially enhance the catalytic reactions. ? Copyright 2016 American Scientific Publishers.