Hydrothermal preparation of mesoporous TiO2 powder from Ti(SO4)2 with poly(ethylene glycol) as template

Mesoporous titania powder with anatase structure was prepared by hydrothermal synthesis from low-cost Ti(SO4)2 water solution with nontoxic poly ethylene glycol (PEG) as a templating agent. The templating pathway was suggested to use hydrogen bonding interaction between the hydrophilic surfaces of flexible rod- or worm-like micelles and the hydrothermal products of Ti(OH)4 to assemble an inorganic oxide framework. The mesoporous channel structures with diameters about 3 nm to 18 nm were achieved by adding appropriate amount of PEG with average moelcular weight of 200. The obtained powder showed good performance for the degradation of gaseous formaldehyde. These results suggested that hydrothermal synthesis with PEG templating provided a low-cost and convenient pathway to synthesis mesoporous TiO2 powder from water solution system.