Titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films were deposited on flexible polycarbonate (PC) substrates by radio frequency (RF) reactive magnetron sputtering. The target was metallic titanium, argon was the plasma gas and oxygen was the reactive gas. Taguchi's method, which uses an L-9 (3(4)) orthogonal array, signal-to-noise ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA), was employed to study the performance of the deposition process. The effects of the deposition parameters on the structure, morphology and photocatalytic performance of the TiO2 films were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction, and UV-vis-NIR spectroscopy. Experiments varied RF power (50, 100, 150 W), deposition time (2, 3, 4 h), O-2/(Ar + O-2) argon/oxygen ratios (40, 60, 80%) and substrate temperatures (room, 80, 120 degrees C), to optimize the photoinduced decomposition of methylene blue (MB). The experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of this approach. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.