Candle-soot derived photoactive and superamphiphobic fractal titania electrode

Carbon soot is one of the oldest materials known for its hydrophobic properties, robustness, and availability, making it an ideal material for use in various applications. The drawbacks, however, are the loose structural binding between constructing carbon nanoparticles and the amorphous nature of soot itself. In this paper, we present a facile chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method that maintains the soot template structural integrity and enables its modification into a highly photoactive, self-cleaning titania fractal network. The results show that the small air pockets available on the surface combined with the salinization process produces a TiO2 fractal network with superamphiphobic properties. Given the high surface area of the fractal network structure and titania's well-known photocatalytic activity, the designed surfaces were assessed for their photocatalytic decoloration activities. The results showed that the soot template derived TiO2 films can offer enormous potential in many different applications where self-cleaning and/or high surface area and photoactive properties are required.