Abstract
In this work, we report on the effect of anodization time on the morphology, optical, and photocatalytic properties of TiO2 nanotubes (NTs) allowing bacterial inactivation and two organic pollutant degradation under low-intensity solar-simulated light. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that the length of the TiO2 NTs increased from 2.8 to 25.8μm as anodization time was increased from 15 to 300min at 60V, respectively. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns showed that all samples crystallize in the anatase phase after annealing at 400°C for 3h. Samples anodized for 30 and 60min exhibit low diffuse reflection at 400nm, which was attributed to the disorder-induced exciton scattering at the molecular level. The intensity of the photoluminescence (PL) spectra was found to increase as the length of the NTs increases up to a maximum anodization time of 300min, revealing the contribution of bulk excitonic states. A maximum photoelectric conversion efficiency of 0.55% was obtained at a potential of - 0.5V vs. Ag/AgCl for TiO2 NTs anodized for 60min. The optimized NTs (anodized for 60min) showed a photocatalytic bacterial inactivation of a magnitude of 6 log within 360min and a degradation of indole and methylene blue (MB) under low-intensity solar-simulated light (50 mW/cm2). The stability of the prepared catalyst was tested over several cycles.
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