Coating-free TiO@β-SiC alveolar foams as a ready-to-use composite photocatalyst with tunable adsorption properties for water treatment.

Coating-free TiO@β-SiC photocatalytic composite foams gathered within a ready-to-use shell/core alveolar medium the photocatalytically active TiO phase and the β-SiC foam structure were prepared a multi-step shape memory synthesis (SMS) replica method. They were fabricated following a sequential two-step carburization approach, in which an external TiC skin was synthesized at the surface of a β-SiC skeleton foam obtained from a pre-shaped polyurethane foam during a first carburization step. The adsorption behaviour of the shell/core TiO@β-SiC composite foams towards the Diuron pollutant in water was tuned by submitting the carbide foams to a final calcination treatment within the 550-700 °C temperature range.

One-pot synthesis of lightly doped Zn Cu O and Au-Zn Cu O with solar light photocatalytic activity in liquid phase.

We report on the facile and low-temperature one-pot chemical synthesis of lightly doped Zn Cu O and hybrid Au-Zn Cu O photocatalysts with low Cu molar content (0 < x < 0.7%) using 1,3-propanediol polyol simultaneously as solvent, reducing and a stabilizing agent, without any final thermal treatment. The photocatalysts have been characterized by X-ray diffraction, N adsorption study, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy.

Titania-Silica Materials for Enhanced Photocatalysis.

Mesoporous titania-organosilica nanoparticles comprised of anatase nanocrystals crosslinked with organosilica moieties have been prepared by direct co-condensation of a titania precursor, tetrabuthylortotitanate (TBOT), with two organosilica precursors, 1,4-bis(triethoxysilyl) benzene (BTEB) and 1,2-bis(triethoxysilyl) ethane (BTEE), in mild conditions and in the absence of surfactant. These hybrid materials show both high surface areas (200-360 m(2)  g(-1) ) and pore volumes (0.3 cm(3)  g(-1) ) even after calcination, and excellent photoactivity in the degradation of rhodamine 6G and in the partial oxidation of propene under UV irradiation, especially after the calcination of the samples.