A TiO2/crosslinked carboxymethyl starch composite for high-efficiency adsorption and photodegradation of cationic golden yellow X-GL dye

In this paper, a crosslinked carboxymethyl starch (CCMS) was prepared with corn starch as the raw material, epichlorohydrin as the crosslinking agent, and chloroacetic acid as the etherifying agent through a series of crosslinking, alkalization, and etherification reactions, respectively. Nano-TiO2 was loaded onto the surface of the CCMS by the sol-gel method to obtain a TiO2/CCMS composite. The TiO2/CCMS composite was characterized by XPS, XRD, SEM, and BET. XPS showed that the surface chemical composition of the TiO2/CCMS composite material contained titanium; XRD diffraction patterns indicated that the crystal form of the TiO2/CCMS composite was a combination of the CCMS and anatase TiO2. The surface morphology obtained by SEM showed that there were nano-TiO2 particles on the surface of the CCMS. The specific surface area of the TiO2/CCMS composite was larger than that of CCMS. The adsorption-photodegradation performance of the TiO2/CCMS composite was also studied under UV irradiation, and the results showed that significant adsorption-photodegradation synergies occurred.