Effect of Different Precursors and Solvents on Material Properties of Anatase Phase Synthesized by Sol-Gel Method

Abstract

TiO2 photocatalyst is one of the advanced oxidation process strategy which may be very potential to be implemented to deal with wastewater. The properties of the organic solvents and alkoxide precursors can impose significant effects on the final products’ microstructures and properties of TiO2. In this case, two organic compounds, ethanol, and methanol were selected for sol-gel synthesis. Besides these two solvents, two precursors, tetra isopropyl orthotitanate and tetra-n-butyl orthotitanate were used. Attention was paid to the structure, bad-gap, morphology, and photocatalytic activity of the samples. XRD confirmed the anatase crystal structure for all samples. The formation of brookite phase was facilitated by the use of tetra isopropyl orthotitanate with ethanol as solvent. The photoluminescence spectra displayed a broad, intense emission in the upper UV region. A band-gap near the theoretical band-gap at 3.2 eV was observed; hence, the photoactivity will occur in the ultraviolet area. TNBm was observed to have a higher percentage (66.5%) and a higher rate (0.5/min) of methylene blue degradation to test the photoactivity of synthesized TiO2 NPs.