Structural and textural features of TiO2/SAPO-34 nanocomposite prepared by the sol–gel method

Abstract

This paper focuses on the synthesis of nanocomposite materials, TiO2/SAPO-34, using the sol–gel method, which involves preparing a mixture between as-synthesized or calcined SAPO-34 zeolite and TiO2 gel under hydrothermal crystallization and then calcining it at 400 °C for the formation of the TiO2 anatase phase. The structural and textural features of the obtained materials were determined by various physico-chemical techniques such as thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction, scanning electronic microscopy, nitrogen sorption at 77 K, energy dispersive X-ray analysis and ultraviolet–visible spectrometry. The DRX results showed that calcination at 400 °C of the mixture between the calcined SAPO-34 and TiO2 gel led to the collapse of the original framework of zeolite, but formed the anatase TiO2 in a nano-spherical morphology; however, the use of as-synthesized SAPO-34 supports provides a mixture phase between SAPO-34 and TiO2 anatase after calcination. The photocatalytic properties of the SAPO-34/TiO2 and TiO2-type materials were tested for the removal of methylene blue (MB) dye. The MB degradation proved to increase as a function of contact time, catalyst mass and the initial concentration of MB.