Ag-Doped TiO2: Synthesis, Characterization and Photodegradation of 4BS Dye

M.J Pawar,A.D Khajone,S.B Deshmukh,V.B Nimbalkar

doi:10.30799/jnst.328.21070401

Abstract

Ag doped TiO2 nanoparticles with different metallic content (0.0, 0.1, 0.15 and 0.2 wt.%) were prepared by using EDTA-Glycol method. For the sake of comparison blank TiO2 sample is also prepared using same method. All the samples have been characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). X-ray diffraction technique revealed that Ag-doped TiO2 has anatase structure and as the concentration of Ag increases the particle size will get decreases. The morphologies of TiO2 samples are influenced by doping Ag as shown by SEM images. The present work is mainly focused on the enhancement of photocatalytic reactivity of as synthesized samples by the photodegradation of 4BS under visible light irradiation using a LED lamp of (15 W) as a light source. A 96.3% of photodegradation of 4BS dye was achieved by utilizing 1 g/L of Ag-doped TiO2 at pH 6 for 100 min.

Highlights

Semiconductor based photocatalysis utilizes natural sun light or artificial light sources to initiate catalytically specific redox reactions under mild conditions, which finds wide applications in environmental remediation, photocatalytic water-splitting and CO2 reduction [1]
The X-ray diffraction (XRD) data obtained from the analysis confirm the decrease of the crystallite size when the Ag amount increases (Table 1), which is in agreement with the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images
The XRD data do not show any peaks related to Ag species, even for Ag(0.2)-TiO2 sample, which is indicative of a high dispersion of the dopants in the TiO2 samples

Summary

Introduction

Semiconductor based photocatalysis utilizes natural sun light or artificial light sources to initiate catalytically specific redox reactions under mild conditions, which finds wide applications in environmental remediation, photocatalytic water-splitting and CO2 reduction [1]. Doping of TiO2 with noble metal nanoparticles such as Pt [7], Ag [8], Pd [9] and Au [10,11,12,13] is an effective tactic to improve the photocatalytic activity. The noble metal nanoparticles contact closely with TiO2 to form Schottky barriers, which drive photogenerated electrons from the n-type TiO2 to the noble metals and enhance the charge separation rate and the photocatalytic activity. For TiO2 doped with Au and Ag, there is an additional effect, the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), which contributes to a strong absorption of the visible light and the photocatalytic performance under the visible light illumination [13,14,15]. Silver (Ag) is an attractive dopant due to its plasmonic properties in visible range along with extraordinary physicochemical properties and lower cost [23]

Methods

Results

Conclusion