Most of commercial dyes and pigments have rather complicated polyaromatic chemical structures with prolonged lifetime surviving in the Mother Nature. However, TiO2 has been reported as one of the best photocatalytic candidates for degrading dye pollutants. In this report, TiO2 film/Ti foil was prepared by hydrothermal reaction in alkali solution, the porous TiO2 film with microcrystalline structure has been obtained. The porous structure of TiO2 film was analyzed and characterized by XRD, FE-SEM and XPS. This is the first report that demonstrates that TiO2 film/Ti foil has an excellent commercial application potential for photocatalytic degradation of Ethyl Violet (EV). Especially, because of refluxing at 100 degrees C. the porous TiO2 film structure remained undisturbed, and EV decomposed in the period of 20 h. In addition, porous TiO2-mediated EV photo degradation mechanism has been proposed, as intermediates are isolated and clearly identified by GC-MS and HPLC-PDA-ESI-MS. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.