Marangoni effect induced macro porous surface films prepared through a facile sol-gel route

Based on TiO₂ as a model system, the sol-gel one step facile method is established to fabricate the macro-porous morphology films on the basis of Marangoni effect. In this proposed mechanism, the binary mixture of hydrophilic CuCl₂ and lipophilic Ti-O network is used in sol to produce phase separation. A suitable evaporation rate in the gel film process leads to the macro-porous film due to Marangoni effect. It is observed that the macro-porous morphology of the film sustains during the annealing process, which suggests the creation of porous surface morphology in gel film stage rather than due to annealing. To analyze the preparation mechanism, the sol-gel process and microstructure of films are examined using TG-DTA, SEM, TEM, XRD, Raman, UV-Vis, XPS and FTIR. Furthermore, the optical-thermal properties are studied for the potential applications of such porous surface films as solar selective absorber.