Preparation of cerium and sulfur codoped TiO2 nanoparticles based photocatalytic activity with enhanced visible light

Abstract

Abstract In this work, the preparation and characterization of Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) codoped with Cerium (Ce) and Sulfur (S) elements was prepared by a hydrothermal method and their photocatalytic activities have been examined. The attained catalysts were characterized by TEM, XRD, BET, FT-IR and UV–vis DRS measurements for investigating nanostructure, crystal phase, band gap and light-harvesting properties of these samples, respectively. The codoping strategy was approved to decrease together the band gap of TiO 2 and the recombination rate of the photo-generated electron-hole pairs. Low concentration doping and codoping with Ce and S with anatase phase in TiO 2 nanoparticle from the XRD studies. UV-DRS indicate that the band gap of TiO 2 (3.2 eV) reduced to 3.02 eV, 2.89 eV and 2.82 eV, by Ce-doping, S-doping and Ce-S codoping, respectively. The Photocatalytic performance of the samples was tested using the degradation of Methyl Orange (MO) as a function of time. It was observed that the codoped TiO 2 provided the highest photocatalytic activity in comparison to the mono-doped and pure TiO 2 since of high visible light absorption and likely reduction in the recombination of photo-generated charges. It is decided that for the codoped TiO 2 , great visible light absorption is produced by the formation of impurity energy states near both the band edges which also act as the trapping sites for both the photo-generated charges to diminish the recombination process.