A novel approach of preparing TiO2 films at low temperature and its application in photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange.

Here we introduce a novel approach of preparing TiO(2) films on conductive substrates at low temperature by electrophoretic deposition method without successive calcinate treatment. The photocatalytic activity of the non-calcinated TiO(2) film was evaluated by degradation rate of methyl orange (MO). We found that the degradation rate of MO increased with the amount of TiO(2), and it was higher in both acidic and alkaline media than under neural condition. In addition, lower pH was more favorable for the degradation of MO. The photocatalytic degradation of MO could be described as pseudo-first order reactions. When the initial concentration of MO increased from 1mg/L to 10mg/L, the highest degradation rate was achieved at 5mg/L. The apparent reaction rate constant was calculated to be 0.0098 min(-1). Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.