Impact of Morphology and Nitrogen and Carbon Codoping on Photocatalytic Activity of TiO2 as Environmental Catalysts

Abstract

We present three different morphologies of TiO2 structures—namely, nanoparticles, nanowires, and dandelion-like particles—by wet chemistry routes as environmental catalysts for the degradation of Methylene Blue. The band-gap energy of these morphologies is tuned by codoping with carbon and nitrogen atoms and controlling the synthesis processing parameters. The physical and chemical properties of the synthesized samples are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The nanoparticles (15–40 nm) and nanowires (diameter of ∼100 nm) mainly have an anatase structure, whereas the dandelion-like particles (diameter of 15–20 μm) show a rutile phase. The reduction percentage in band-gap energy of TiO2 is dependent on its morphology, ranking in the following order: nanoparticles > nanowires > dandelion-like particles, with the latter...