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Updated: Jun 9, 2026

TiO2-coated Hollow Glass Microspheres with Superhydrophobic and High IR-reflective Properties Synthesized by a Soft-chemistry Method
Published on: April 26, 2017
Hydrophilic TiO2 porous spheres anchored on hydrophobic polypropylene membrane for wettability induced high
Fang Niu1, Le-Sheng Zhang, Chao-Qiu Chen
1Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, P. R. China.
Abstract:
TiO(2) porous nanospheres on polypropylene (PP) films (TiO(2)/PP composite) are produced at ambient temperature. Particle/pore size match up is the key anchoring point to overcome the low affinity between hydrophilic materials and hydrophobic materials. With the hydrophilic TiO(2) catalyst evenly dispersed on a hydrophobic surface, the aqueous solution will selectively skip the substrate and wet the catalysts. Such a wettability-induced smart system maximizes the degrading activity of the TiO(2) catalyst. In photodegrading reactions, the resulting TiO(2)/PP composite film exhibits a 10 times higher activity in flow-type setup than the same TiO(2) catalyst in a traditional batch-type setup.

