surface fluorinated microsized-tio2 for formulation of self-cleaning cement

The use of nanosized-titanium dioxide (n-tio2) for the formulation of self-cleaning cement has the associated drawbacks of nano-toxicity, higher cost, and agglomeration in the cementitious material. these drawbacks can be avoided by the replacement of  n-tio2 with microsized tio2 (m-tio2). however, m-tio2 is less photocatalytically active as compared to n-tio2 . therefore, in the present work, surface fluorination of  m-tio2  has been studied to enhance its photocatalytic activity for the formulation of self-cleaning white cement. the commercially available m-tio2 (average size 40 μm) was surface fluorinated using aqueous solutions of different molar concentrations of naf (sodium fluoride) such as 10, 50, and 100 mmol/dm3. the surface fluorinated m-tio2 was analyzed using diffuse reflectance (drs) spectroscopy, photoluminescence (pl) spectroscopy, and x-ray diffraction (xrd) analysis to observe the improvement in the physiochemical properties and photocatalytic characteristics. further, the surface fluorinated m-tio2 along with calcined dolomite was utilized for the formulation of self-cleaning white cement. the hence prepared self-cleaning cement was cast into cement slabs, which were then characterized by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (drs) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (eds). the self-cleaning ability and photocatalytic activity of the as-prepared cement slabs were evaluated through rhodamine b (rhb) degradation test. it has been found that the use m-tio2, which was surface fluorinated using 10 mmol/dm3 solution of naf, remarkably enhanced the photocatalytic performance of the self-cleaning cement.