Authors

Abstract

Heterogeneous photocatalysts offer great potential for converting photon energy into chemical energy for decomposition and destruction of organic contaminants from organic molecules i.e. Rhodamine B (RhB) and p-nitophenol (p-NP) under UV light. The titania based novel MxNbxTi1-2xO2-x/2 (M = Cr, Fe; x = 0.01-0.2) was prepared by tetra and tri-podal amine type binder with iron or chromium support using sol–gel method followed by calcination at 150 o C in an auto generated pressure. The photodegradation performance of the optimized catalyst was compared with synthesized nano-compositions, P-25 titania with RhB and p-NP. The particle sizes, surface area, mesopore sizes of CrxNbxTi1-2xO2-x/2 (x = 0.01) (CNT1) and FexNbxTi1-2xO2-x/2 (x = 0.01) (FNT1) are 12±1 and 10±2 nm, SBET=162 and 145 m 2 g −1 , 4.9 and 4-5 nm, respectively. The energy band gap of CNT1, FNT1 and NT was found to be 1.85, 2.06 and 2.1 eV, respectively. The importance of CNT1 powders is that it shows good photocatalytic activity for the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) within only 180 min and the importance of FNT1 powders is that it reduces the p-NP to p-aminophenol using a little bit of NaBH4 (0.054 g) within 10 min as compared to pure anatase TiO2 and other compositions of MxNbxTi1-2xO2-x/2 (M = Cr, Fe).

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