Double shelled titanium dioxide@mesoporous organosilica nanotube as an amphiphilic photoactive nanoreactor for efficient photocatalytic oxidation of styrene

Xiaoyun Qiao; Zeshan Xiong; Yi Wang; Runwei Wang; Zongtao Zhang; Shilun Qiu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.07.175

Double shelled titanium dioxide@mesoporous organosilica nanotube as an amphiphilic photoactive nanoreactor for efficient photocatalytic oxidation of styrene

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Dec:651:235-242. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.07.175. Epub 2023 Jul 28.

Authors

Xiaoyun Qiao¹, Zeshan Xiong¹, Yi Wang², Runwei Wang³, Zongtao Zhang¹, Shilun Qiu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
² Anhui Xiangsheng New Material Co., LTD, Room 208, Integrated Service Center, Coal Chemical Road, Pingwei Town, Panji District, Huainan City, Anhui Province 232089, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China. Electronic address: rwwang@jlu.edu.cn.

PMID: 37542898
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.07.175

Abstract

In this work, we have proposed a strategy to fabricate double-shell nanotubes as amphiphilic photoactive nanoreactors (HTTBPC) through the ordered hybridization of mesoporous organosilicon (PMO) and titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanotubes. Unlike the previous rough composite, the heterogeneous structure established between cobalt-porphyrin functionalized PMO and conventional TiO₂ has a staggered matching band gap, which makes it have excellent light harvesting and high carrier separation ability. This is still unexplored. Interestingly, the prepared photocatalysts exhibited superior activity (99%) and benzaldehyde selectivity (94%) in the oxidation of styrene in water at room temperature, which was 3.8 and 2.8 times higher than that of TiO₂ nanotubes and PMO functionalized with cobalt porphyrin, respectively. It was demonstrated that the strong interaction between cobalt porphyrin PMO and TiO₂ improved the separation of photogenerated carriers and the amphiphilic properties of mesoporous organosilica boosted the adsorption of substrate molecules in water, contributing to the significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity. This work provides a design of high-performance photocatalysts for alkene oxidation under green conditions.

Keywords: Amphiphilic nanoreactor; Cobalt porphyrin; Periodic mesoporous organosilica; Styrene oxidation; TiO(2) nanotubes.