Organic/inorganic hybrid consisting of supportive poly(arylene ether nitrile) microspheres and photocatalytic titanium dioxide nanoparticles for the adsorption and photocatalysis of methylene blue

Abstract In this work, the hybrid microspheres (B-b-S-P/TiO2) fabricated by immobilizing titanium dioxide (TiO2) on the pre-prepared poly (arylene ether nitrile) (B-b-S-P) microspheres were obtained via sol-gel method. To investigate the comprehensive functionality of B-b-S-P microspheres and TiO2 nanoparticles in dyes wastewater treatment process, four kinds of B-b-S-P/TiO2 hybrid microspheres were fabricated by tuning the content of TiO2 nanoparticles. The achieved microspheres were characterized by several techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) and UV–Vis spectrophotometry (UV–Vis). Results revealed that the B-b-S-P microspheres were efficient in adsorption of MB and the TiO2 nanoparticles were anatase pattern with photocatalytic activity for degradation of MB. The B-b-S-P/TiO2-1 and B-b-S-P/TiO2-2 hybrid microspheres that containing 12.3 wt% and 24.8 wt% TiO2 nanoparticles, respectively, displayed good adsorption efficiency to MB, while the subsequent photodegradations were limited. When TiO2 content was 48.3 wt%, B-b-S-P/TiO2-4 hybrid microspheres tended to aggregate, which not only impeded their adsorption to MB but also decreased the light utilization efficiency in photodegradation stage. As a result, B-b-S-P/TiO2-3 hybrid microspheres containing 40.7 wt% TiO2 nanoparticles made full use of the adsorption advantage of B-b-S-P and photocatalytic superiority of TiO2 nanoparticles. They exhibited the most efficient decolorization performance accompanied by a demethylation reaction.