Study on Preparation of Flexible Weaveable Ti Wire/TiO₂ Nanoporous Film Photoanodes and Their Photocatalytic Performance

Various pollutants can be efficiently degraded by semiconductor photoelectrocatalysis technology and the key of this technology is to develop efficient, easily recyclable and stable photoelectrodes. In this study, TiO₂ nanoporous films grow in situ on the surface of the flexible titanium wire by using anodic oxidation technology, and the as-prepared films possess pore size diameters of 85 nm and thickness of 10 μm. The Ti wire/TiO₂ nanofilm composite has excellent flexibility, and is woven into fabric photoanodes with the weight of 0.25 g and area of 36 cm². The photocatalytic experiment is carried out on the fabric photoanodes. The results show that the photocurrent rises from 0 mA to 0.32 mA when the bias voltage increases from 0 V to 0.6 V under the illumination condition. It is worth noting that the fabric photoanodes can degrade 87.8% Rhodamine B (RhB) in the photo electrocatalytic process for 120 min under the bias voltage of 0.6 V, which significantly exceeds 60.0% and 3.6% of those of the photocatalysis and electrocatalysis. Furthermore, the degradation efficiency of RhB remains 85.0% after four cycles, showing good performance stability of Ti wire/TiO₂ nanoporous film photoanodes. Therefore, Ti wire/TiO₂ nanoporous film photoanode shows excellent prospects for photoelectroca-talytic degradation of contaminants.