Fabrication of porous TiO2 film on Ti foil by hydrothermal process and its photocatalytic efficiency and mechanisms with ethyl violet dye.

Most of commercial dyes and pigments have rather complicated polyaromatic chemical structures with prolonged lifetime surviving in the Mother Nature. However, TiO(2) has been reported as one of the best photocatalytic candidates for degrading dye pollutants. In this report, TiO(2) film/Ti foil was prepared by hydrothermal reaction in alkali solution, the porous TiO(2) film with microcrystalline structure has been obtained. The porous structure of TiO(2) film was analyzed and characterized by XRD, FE-SEM and XPS. This is the first report that demonstrates that TiO(2) film/Ti foil has an excellent commercial application potential for photocatalytic degradation of Ethyl Violet (EV). Especially, because of refluxing at 100 degrees C, the porous TiO(2) film structure remained undisturbed, and EV decomposed in the period of 20 h. In addition, porous TiO(2)-mediated EV photo degradation mechanism has been proposed, as intermediates are isolated and clearly identified by GC-MS and HPLC-PDA-ESI-MS.