Single-crystalline rutile TiO2 nanorod array on flexible Ti substrates for efficient photoelectrocatalytic degradation of phenol in water

Single-crystalline nanorods are intrinsic highways for charge transfer and hence ideal nanofeatures for efficient photoelectrochemical (PEC) degradations of pollutants in wastewater. Photocatalytic thin films on flexible substrates avoid the nuisance catalysts-recovering procedure and also allow for the flexible design in photocatalytic apparatus. We therefore directly deposited single-crystalline rutile TiO2 nanorod arrays on flexible and conductive Ti substrates through a hydrothermal technique and optimized the synthetic parameters to achieve an extremely high PEC activity towards phenol removal in water under UV light illumination. In the presence of tetrabutyltitanate (TBT) and HCl reactants under a hydrothermal environment, a balance in the erosion of the Ti substrate and the precipitation of TiO2 nanorods is found to be the key to tune the nanofeatures of the TiO2 thin films and in turn the PEC efficiency. The decreasing TBT concentration achieved a more sparsely distributed nanorod array, which significantly contributes to the PEC activity; yet too little TBT resulted in total dissolution of Ti plates. The PEC activity increased with increasing hydrothermal duration because of more loaded TiO2. The maximum reaction rate constant is 2.74 h−1, which is 39 times that of a commercial P25 TiO2 nanoparticulate film. The photocurrent stabilized at 0.9 mA/cm2 under the illumination of AM1.5G simulated solar light, suggesting a high separation efficiency of photogenerated holes and electrons along the single-crystalline rutile TiO2 nanorod arrays.