3D Macro-Mesoporous TiO₂-Graphene Oxide (GO) Composite with Enhanced Catalytic Performance in the Epoxidation of Styrene and its Derivatives

It has been widely accepted that graphene oxide shows promising potential on facilitating electron transfer which can enhance catalytic properties. In this work, a 3D ordered macro-mesoporous titania composites with graphene oxide (TiO₂-GO) were synthesized through a confinement self-assembly method and applied to the epoxidation reactions of styrene and its derivatives. XRD, BET, SEM, TEM and XPS were used to characterize the hierarchically ordered composites. The incorporation of GO in the TiO₂-GO composite made the catalyst structure rather stable and dramatically improved the catalytic activity compared with pure mesoporous TiO₂, the conversion of styrene in epoxidation raised from 53.68 % to 93.34 % as the TiO₂ combined with GO. Based on the experimental results, the mechanism was proposed to study the π-π interaction between GO and styrene, which was further confirmed by Photoluminescence (PL) analysis, polarization and cyclic voltammetry curves. In short, combining GO with metallic oxide materials will enhance the catalytic performance in epoxidation reactions and such designed strategy can extend to other catalytic reactions.