Polyethyleneimine-assisted synthesis of ionic liquid-derived Mo-based mesoporous TiO2 composite with superior oxidative desulfurization activity

The development of fast and high yield route for large scale synthesis porous TiO 2 based catalyst has attracted widespread concern in the field of optoelectronic and catalysis. Up to now, the facile synthesis of mesoporous TiO 2 based composite is still limited to wet chemical synthesis approach (hydrothermal, phase transformation, or sol-gel method etc.). Here, we develop a polyethyleneimine-assisted solvent-free strategy to synthesize of ionic liquid-derived Mo-based mesoporous TiO 2 composite, with molybdenum sites uniformly distributed on TiO 2 matrix. As-synthesized ionic liquid-derived mesoporous MoO x /TiO 2 composite is composed of uniform nano-sized anatase particles and connected by worm-like mesoporous channel. Moreover, the calcination conditions and loading amount of molybdenum-containing ionic liquid have been further optimized. These distinct characteristics endow the prospective MoO x /TiO 2 composite with excellent performance in catalytic oxidation reaction, which can remove refractory organic sulfur compound in the model fuel effectively. Our work opens a new solvent-free avenue to synthesis porous metal based ionic liquids/TiO 2 composite.