Effect of Sulfur Doped Nanotitania for Degradation of Remazol Yellow and Phenol

Abstract

Nanocrystalline TiO2 and sulfur-doped TiO2 were synthesized using the sol-gel method. Tween-80, titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP), and sulfuric acid were employed as raw materials for the synthesis of TiO2. All the synthesized samples were heated for 3 h at 500 ºC. Each cell parameter of the prepared samples was explored by employing the Rietveld refinement of X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns. For sulfur-doped TiO2 and TiO2 samples, considerable differences were observed in their cell parameters. Under ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, the phenol and remazol yellow (RY) photodegradation of the sintered samples was analyzed. Physical properties were studied using Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyzes to measure the surface area. The XRD results confirmed that except nano-anatase, no other phase was present in any sample. The particle size range is 10-15 nm. BET surface results showed that doping concentrations influenced the surface area. On the samples with a larger surface area, photodegradation is superior, which coincides with a higher doping concentration.