Engineering of mono-dispersed mesoporous TiO2 over 1-D nanorods for water purification under visible light irradiation

Harish Santhanakrishnan; Navaneethan Mani; Archana Jayaram; Ponnusamy Suruttaiyaudiyar; Muthamizhchelvan Chellamuthu; Masaru Shimomura

doi:10.1007/s11356-020-10547-z

Engineering of mono-dispersed mesoporous TiO₂ over 1-D nanorods for water purification under visible light irradiation

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Apr;28(15):18768-18777. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-10547-z. Epub 2020 Sep 14.

Authors

Harish Santhanakrishnan^{1

2}, Navaneethan Mani^{3

4}, Archana Jayaram³, Ponnusamy Suruttaiyaudiyar³, Muthamizhchelvan Chellamuthu³, Masaru Shimomura⁵

Affiliations

¹ Functional Materials and Energy Devices Laboratory, Department of Physics and Nanotechnology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, 603 203, India. aravindharri@gmail.com.
² Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Naka-Ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 432-8011, Japan. aravindharri@gmail.com.
³ Functional Materials and Energy Devices Laboratory, Department of Physics and Nanotechnology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, 603 203, India.
⁴ Nanotechnology Research Centre (NRC), Faculty of Engineering and Technology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, 603 203, India.
⁵ Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Naka-Ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 432-8011, Japan.

PMID: 32929671
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-020-10547-z

Abstract

Herein we synthesized a novel structure of mesoporous TiO₂ decorated on 1D ZnO nanorods for environmental remediation. The effect of mesoporous TiO₂ over 1D nanorods were investigated. The phase transitions of nanocomposite were confirmed by powder diffraction analysis. The morphological investigation of synthesized TiO₂/ZnO catalyst revealed that the TiO₂ are in porous in nature which covered the surface of 1D nanorods. The size of mesoporous TiO₂ nanoparticles was about 10-15 nm. The chemical composition and elemental mapping results clearly evident that the presence of ZnO and TiO₂ is distributed uniformly on ZnO nanorods. TiO₂/ZnO nanocomposite shows enhanced activity which degrades in 14 min under visible light irradiation. TiO₂/ZnO catalyst with 5 wt % exhibited the high photocatalytic activity (0.1882 min^-1). It is proposed that a synergistic interaction between ZnO and TiO₂ leads to a charge separation which leads to the enhanced activity.

Keywords: Mesoporous; Nanorods; Photocatalytic activity; TiO2/ZnO; Visible light.

MeSH terms

Light
Nanotubes*
Titanium
Water Purification*

Substances

titanium dioxide
Titanium