WO3–TiO2 nanocomposites for paracetamol degradation under visible light

Abstract

TiO2 has wide band gap energy and also it has fast recombination rate for electron and hole. Therefore, titanium dioxide excited by ultraviolet light and its photocatalytic activity is small. Enlargement of titanium dioxide activity can be carried out by separation of electron–hole pairs. In this, TiO2–WO3 nanocomposites with various percent of WO3 were synthesis by sol–gel technique in existence of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide as template. Physical, photocatalytic and structural properties of titanium dioxide and TiO2–WO3 nanocomposites were measured by many characterizations tools. Performance of titanium dioxide and TiO2–WO3 nanocomposites were measured for paracetamol degradation using visible light. Titanium dioxide band gap can be tailored by control tungsten trioxide weight percent. 3 wt% of tungsten trioxide reduce band gap to 2.63 eV. The optimum weight percent of tungsten trioxide is 3 wt% at which photocatalytic performance for paracetamol degradation is larger than that of TiO2, TiO2–WO3—1 wt%, TiO2–WO3—2 wt% and TiO2–WO3—4 wt% by 33.3, 2.1, 1.6 and 1 times, respectively. TiO2–WO3—3 wt% has photocatalytic stability for five times.