Microwave irradiation was used as a tool for shortening the reaction time in the hydrothermal process for the fabrication of TiO2 nanotubes. The variation of microwave hydrothermal treatment time from 1 h to 4 h was implemented to investigate the effects of microwave reaction time on the nanotubes formation. Many different spectroscopic and physicochemical analysis, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy (RS), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Brunauer-Emmett- Teller (BET) and UV-Vis DRS spectroscopy, were performed to characterize the microwave hydrothermally synthesized TiO2 nanotubes (TNTs). The results demonstrated that the TNTs preparation time can be significantly reduced to 4 h by the use of microwave hydrothermal process under the optimized microwave conditions of 150 oC, 195 W and the rotation speed of 300 rpm. The obtained nanostructured TiO2 products with chemical formula Na2-xHxTi2O5.H2O indicated larger BET surface area over 200 m2 •g−1 as compared to 56 m2 • g−1 of the TiO2-P25 precursor. The study revealed the high degree of dye adsorption by TiO2 nanotubes during the photocatalytic dye degradation experiments.

Keywords: TiO2, Nanotubes, Hydrothermal method, Microwave, Photocatalytic activity.