Carbon coated titanium dioxide (CC-TiO2) as an efficient material for photocatalytic degradation
Abstract
TiO2 is an efficient, cost effective, and common photocatalyst. But there are some technical issues with TiO2 such as fast charge recombination, wide band gap, and low surface area of bulk TiO2 which limit the practical application of TiO2 photocatalysts. Carbon coating of TiO2 is found to provide many advantages such as high absorptivity, high photocatalytic activity, stability of the anatase phase, etc. In the present study, carbon coated titanium dioxide (CC-TiO2) is fabricated by colloidal processing using TiO2 powder and sucrose followed by heat treatment in an argon atmosphere at different temperatures. Samples are characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, BET technique, Raman spectroscopy, field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) and field emission gun transmission electron microscopy (FEG-TEM), respectively. The photocatalytic activity of CC-TiO2 is studied for cationic dyes (MB (methylene blue) and CV (crystal violet)). The sample heat treated at 800 °C shows the highest photocatalytic activity. This particular sample exhibited the lowest optical band gap compared with all other heat-treated samples.
- This article is part of the themed collection: Energy Advances: Highlight India