Solvothermal synthesis and visible light-driven photocatalytic degradation for tetracycline of Fe-doped SrTiO3

Abstract

In this paper, Fe-doped SrTiO₃ (FSTO) photocatalysts were successfully prepared via a facile solvothermal method, and their photocatalytic activities for degrading tetracycline (TC) under visible light irradiation were examined. It was found that doping Fe³⁺ into the lattice of SrTiO₃ resulted in the formation of new absorption bands in the visible light region, and the energy band gap decreased from 3.2 eV to 2.6 eV with Fe³⁺ doping amounts of 0 to 5 wt%. The photocatalytic experimental results indicated that the as-prepared FSTO photocatalysts generate an extremely high enhancement in the TC degradation ratio compared to the pure SrTiO₃ under visible light irradiation. In particular, the FSTO sample doped with 3% Fe exhibited the highest TC degradation ratio (71.6%) in 80 min, which is mainly attributed to the narrowed gap generated by the appropriate level of Fe³⁺ doping. This work suggests that this doping method should be applicable for exploiting other efficient visible light-driven photocatalysts with wide band gap semiconductors.