Effects of Tritonx100 and Tetraethylorthosilicate on the Morphology and Photocatalyst Properties of TiO2 Thin Film

The effects of non-ionic Triton X-100 (TX) surfactant and Tetraethylorthosilicate binder agent for preparing the TiO2 (TO) thin film were investigated. TO thin film was prepared using tetra chloride titanium as a precursor via an acid catalyzed sol-gel process. The morphology and surface structure of the films were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The structure and surface of films obtained by a dip-coating technique were found to depend strongly on the use and type of additive molecules added. The results show that, the film from titania sol without various additives molecules consists of agglomerated titania particles and ill-defined surface, which may cause the surface to be non-uniform, whereas Titania /TX-100 (TO-TX) sols resulted in the homogeneous and crack-free TO anatase films. Thin film deposited on SiO2-coated glass substrate indicate a packed and dense structure of the TO film. Many fine pores with different sizes existed in the TiO2-SiO2 films (TO-SO). Dense structure with conformal coverage on SO is observed for TO film. A cross-sectional morphology of the thin films by one and six times of coating is investigated. It can be observed, grain size and thickness increase with increasing the number of coating times. It should be mentioned that film thickness for the one and six times of coating are 181nm and 205 nm respectively. Furthermore the photocatalytic decomposition of MCB for TO, TO-TX, TO-SO and TO-TX-SO thin films was measured as 13.2%, 53.72%, 86.02% and 97.45%, respectively. Th

Crystal structures, spectroscopic, electrochemical, and antibacterial properties of a series of new copper(II) Schiff base complexes

<div><p>Two new and two previously reported Schiff base ligands as well as four corresponding new Cu(II) complexes (CuL^1–4) were synthesized and characterized. The Schiff base ligands were synthesized from condensation of 5-bromo-2-hydroxy-3-nitrobenzaldehyde with aliphatic (H₂L^1–2) or aromatic (H₂L^3–4) diamines. Crystal structures of CuL² and CuL³ were determined by X-ray crystallography. Antibacterial properties of these ligands and complexes were studied against four human pathogenic bacteria. The complexes showed moderate antibacterial activities, higher than those of the ligands.</p></div