Synthesis of N-doped mesoporous TiO2 by facile one-step solvothermal process for visible light photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutant

Abstract

Utilization of visible-light in photocatalysis is one of the key aspects of achieving effective application. Non-metal doping solely is often not adequate to give a genuinely practical solution because of challenging separation process. Here, we demonstrate the facile synthesis of modified TiO2 by non-metal N-doping and surface modification through a one-step solvothermal method. Under this process, both N-dopant and CTAB could be introduced in one process thus creating N-doped mesoporous TiO2 after template removal using calcination. N2 physisorption indicated high specific surface area up to 148.60 m2/g. Furthermore, the adsorption-desorption isotherm curve exhibited type IV thus confirming the presence of a mesoporous structure, with H1 and H2 hysteresis loop for slow and fast ramp calcination, respectively. Various characterizations were also carried out to explain the possible band-gap reduction mechanism which leads to the workability extension of the as-synthesized photocatalyst. Faster and superior settling capability was shown qualitatively using static settling test. The performance of the modified photocatalysts showed improved performance in methylene blue (cationic dye) and methyl orange (anionic dye) degradation under visible light (λ > 400 nm) as compared to other commercially available TiO2 photocatalysts. In conclusion, facile modifications introduced in this research proved to bring constructive effect, establishing better photocatalyst with effective utilization of visible light and also simple to retrieve catalyst.