Preparation of purely inorganic silica doped titania fibers via electrospinning

Abstract

The preparation technique to obtain purely inorganic silica doped titania fibers using electrospinning together with solgel method was proposed. For the system without silicon doping, fibers were too brittle to form long fiber. And it was clarified that small amount of doped silicon could modify the flexibility of fibers drastically and long fibers with appropriate mechanical property could be obtained. After calcination at 500°C for 2 h anatase phase was appeared and the specific surface area of fibers with composition of [Ti]/[Si] = 6 showed highest value 71.9 m 2 /g among all the samples tested, which is even higher than typical fine particles. The result of decomposition experiment of Rhodamine B dye solution showed that the silica doped titania fiber has adequate photocatalytic activity to decompose organic matters.