• Journal of Powder Materials
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.347-358
• /
• 2011

Two different schemes were adopted to fabricate ordered macroporous structures with face centered cubic lattice of air spheres. Monodisperse polymeric latex suspension, which was synthesized by emulsifier-free emulsion polymerization, was mixed with metal oxide ceramic nanoparticles, followed by evaporation-induced self-assembly of the mixed hetero-colloidal particles. After calcination, inverse opal was generated during burning out the organic nanospheres. Inverse opals made of silica or iron oxide were fabricated according to this procedure. Other approach, which utilizes ceramic precursors instead of nanoparticles was adopted successfully to prepare ordered macroporous structure of titania with skeleton structures as well as lithium niobate inverted structures. Similarly, two different schemes were utilized to obtain disordered macroporous structures with random arrays of macropores. Disordered macroporous structure made of indium tin oxide (ITO) was obtained by fabricating colloidal glass of polystyrene microspheres with low monodispersity and subsequent infiltration of the ITO nanoparticles followed by heat treatment at high temperature for burning out the organic microspheres. Similar random structure of titania was also fabricated by mixing polystyrene building block particles with titania nanoparticles having large particle size followed by the calcinations of the samples.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.57 no.2
• /
• pp.185-197
• /
• 2019

Deactivation of porous photocatalytic materials was studied using three types of microstructured particles: macroporous titania particles, titania microspheres, and porous silica microspheres containing CNTs and $TiO_2$ nanoparticles. All particles were synthesized by emulsion-assisted self-assembly using micron-sized droplets as micro-reactors. During repeated cycles of the photocatalytic decomposition reaction, the non-dimensionalized initial rate constants (a) were estimated as a function of UV irradiation time (t) from experimental kinetics data, and the results were plotted for a regression according to the exponentially decaying equation, $a=a_0\;{\exp}(-k_dt)$. The retardation constant ($k_d$) was then compared for macroporous titania microparticles with different pore diameters to examine the effect of pore size on photocatalytic deactivation. Nonporous or larger macropores resulted in smaller values of the deactivation constant, indicating that the adsorption of organic materials during the photocatalytic decomposition reaction hinders the generation of active radicals from the titania surface. A similar approach was adopted to evaluate the activation constant of porous silica particles containing CNT and $TiO_2$ nanoparticles to compare the deactivation during recycling of the photocatalyst. As the amount of CNTs increased, the deactivation constant decreased, indicating that the conductive CNTs enhanced the generation of active radicals in the aqueous medium during photocatalytic oxidation.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.56 no.4
• /
• pp.524-535
• /
• 2018

In this study, macroporous titania powders were synthesized utilizing the emulsion-assisted self-assembly to apply the removal of B. subtilis under UV irradiation, and the results were compared with the bactericidal effect of commercial titania nanoparticles. By changing the pore size of the porous titania powder, the reduction of B. subtilis by photocatalytic effect was measured, and the bactericidal capacity of the porous particles according to the pore size was compared in order to derive the optimum condition of the sterilization experiment. It was observed that the sterilization effect increased as the pore size became smaller, and it was confirmed that more than 50% of B. subtilis cold be removed for 1 hour of UV irradiation. Also, in order to promote the generation of active chemical species, a diluted solution of hydrogen peroxide was combined with the photocatalytic sterilization method, resulting in the removal of most of the strain after ultraviolet irradiation for 1 hour.