Facile synthesis of TiO₂ film on glass for the photocatalytic removal of rhodamine B and tetracycline hydrochloride

Photocatalysis is one of the efficient approaches for pollution control in water. However, the traditional photocatalysts used for the removal of organic pollutants are in powder form, which makes it difficult to recover them from the suspended reaction system. On the contrary, thin film photocatalyst is easy to be retrieved and possesses unique feature for practical application. In present work, stable TiO₂ sol suspension was prepared and amorphous TiO₂ thin film was then immobilized upon glass substrate through facile spin coating method. The thickness of film could be simply controlled by changing the number of coatings, and anatase TiO₂ film could be formed after calcination. The prepared thin films were characterized with X-ray diffraction (XRD), ultravioletvisible spectrophotometry (UV-vis), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The photodegradations of organic pollutants including colored dye and colorless antibiotic were tested and found to be thickness-dependent. Additionally, the prepared film photocatalst has good stability and may have potential applications in wastewater treatment.