Enhanced visible light photocatalytic activity of TiO2 co-doped with Fe, Co, and S for degradation of Cango red

Muhammad Imran; Zohaib Saeed; Muhammad Pervaiz; Kashif Mehmood; Rabia Ejaz; Umer Younas; Hafiz Amir Nadeem; Shah Hussain

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2021.119644

Enhanced visible light photocatalytic activity of TiO₂ co-doped with Fe, Co, and S for degradation of Cango red

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2021 Jul 5:255:119644. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119644. Epub 2021 Mar 12.

Authors

Muhammad Imran¹, Zohaib Saeed¹, Muhammad Pervaiz², Kashif Mehmood³, Rabia Ejaz⁴, Umer Younas⁵, Hafiz Amir Nadeem¹, Shah Hussain⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan.
² Department of Chemistry, Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan; Department of Chemistry - The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan.
³ Department of Materials Engineering, National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
⁵ Department of Chemistry - The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan. Electronic address: dr.shahhussain@gcu.edu.pk.

PMID: 33812235
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119644

Abstract

The photocatalytic activity of TiO₂ was enhanced under visible light when it was co-doped with Fe, Co, and S through the sol-gel method. The resultant nano photocatalysts were characterized by XRD, EDX coupled with SEM, FT-IR, UV-Vis, and UV-DRS. The concentration ratio of precursor salts of Fe and S was kept at 1% each and of Co varied between 0.5% -1.5%. The photodegradation of Congo red was carried out and various factors like the concentration of catalyst, initial concentration of dye, pH, and irradiation time were also investigated to optimize the degradation process. Under optimized degradation conditions, 99.3% of Congo red (30 ppm) was degraded at slightly acidic pH, with 0.14 g of photocatalyst within 70 min of irradiation time.

Keywords: Nano-catalyst; Photocatalyst; Textile dye; TiO(2).