Large-scale preparation of nanoporous TiO2 film on titanium substrate with improved photoelectrochemical performance

Fabrication of three-dimensional TiO2 films on Ti substrates is one important strategy to obtain efficient electrodes for energy conversion and environmental applications. In this work, we found that hierarchical porous TiO2 film can be prepared by treating H2O2 pre-oxidized Ti substrate in TiCl3 solution followed by calcinations. The formation process is a combination of the corrosion of Ti substrate and the oxidation hydrolysis of TiCl3. According to the characterizations by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), the anatase phase TiO2 films show porous morphology with the smallest diameter of 20 nm and possess enhanced optical absorption properties. Using the porous film as a working electrode, we found that it displays efficient activity for photoelectrocatalytic decolorization of rhodamine B (RhB) and photocurrent generation, with a photocurrent density as high as 1.2 mA/cm(2). It represents a potential method to fabricate large-area nanoporous TiO2 film on Ti substrate due to the scalability of such chemical oxidation process.