Highly Active Amino-Fullerene Derivative-Modified TiO2 for Enhancing Formaldehyde Degradation Efficiency under Solar-Light Irradiation

Abstract

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is a ubiquitous indoor pollutant that seriously endangers human health. The removal of formaldehyde effectively at room temperature has always been a challenging problem. Here, a kind of amino-fullerene derivative (C60-EDA)-modified titanium dioxide (C60-EDA/TiO2) was prepared by one-step hydrothermal method, which could degrade the formaldehyde under solar light irradiation at room temperature with high efficiency and stability. Importantly, the introduction of C60-EDA not only increases the adsorption of the free formaldehyde molecules but also improves the utilization of sunlight and suppresses photoelectron-hole recombination. The experimental results indicated that the C60-EDA/TiO2 nanoparticles exhibit much higher formaldehyde removal efficiency than carboxyl-fullerene-modified TiO2, pristine TiO2 nanoparticles, and almost all other reported formaldehyde catalysts especially in the aspect of the quality of formaldehyde that is treated by catalyst with unit mass (mHCHO/mcatalyst = 40.85 mg/g), and the removal efficiency has kept more than 96% after 12 cycles. Finally, a potential formaldehyde degradation pathway was deduced based on the situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectrometry (DRIFTS) and reaction intermediates. This work provides some indications into the design and fabrication of the catalysts with excellent catalytic performances for HCHO removal at room temperature.