Abstract
In the present work, we have reported a facile and large-scale synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) through urea-assisted thermal decomposition of titanium oxysulphate. We have successfully synthesized TiO2 NPs by using this effective route with different weight ratios of titanium oxysulphate: urea. The structures and properties of TiO2 NPs were confirmed by scanning electron microscope) (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), ultra violet–visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), and photoluminescence (Pl) techniques. XRD demonstrated that TiO2 NPs holds of anatase crystal phase with crystallizing size 14–19 nm even after heating at 600 °C. TGA, SEM, and TEM images reveal urea’s role, which controls the size, morphology, and aggregation of TiO2 NPs during the thermal decomposition. These TiO2 NPs were employed for photodegradation of Methyl Orange (MO) in the presence of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. An interesting find was that the TiO2 NPs exhibited better photocatalytic activity and excellent recycling stability over several photodegradation cycles. Furthermore, the present method has a great perspective to be used as an efficient method for large-scale synthesis of TiO2 NPs.
Highlights
Over the last few decades, more focus has been given to learning the revival of the environment by the degradation of organic and inorganic pollutants to safe or less hazardous molecules
Our finding suggests that the thermal decomposition synthesis method has many advantages like being a single step, not using expensive or harsh chemicals and low cost and can be the simplest attempt to synthesize TiO2 NPs photocatalyst for environmental remediation
The TiO2 NPs have been synthesized by grinding titanium oxysulphate and urea in a mortar and pestle for 15 min; the obtained powder was heated at 600 ◦C with a heating rate of 15 ◦C per min in the muffle furnace for 3 h
Summary
Over the last few decades, more focus has been given to learning the revival of the environment by the degradation of organic and inorganic pollutants to safe or less hazardous molecules. Numerous metal oxides like TiO2, ZnO, Bi2O3 and Fe2O3 have been used for the removal of organic water pollutants [5,6,7] Among these metal oxides, TiO2 has emerged as excellent photocatalytic material due to its high optical sensitivity, stability, low cost, non-toxic nature, wide energy bandgap (3.2 eV) and high photocatalytic activity [8]. [10] these methods suffer from drawbacks such as the use of toxic substrates, high-cost equipment, high temperature, complicated procedures and low yields Compared to these synthetic methods, the thermal decomposition method is a relatively fast, simple, costeffective and environmentally friendly path for large-scale synthesis of TiO2 NPs. As far as a literature survey is concerned, few reports on the synthesis of TiO2 NPs through thermal decomposition of titanium oxysulphate by using urea without any tedious procedure.
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