Photocatalyst Ag@N/TiO2 nanoparticles: Fabrication, characterization, and investigation of the effect of coating on methyl orange dye degradation

Abstract

In this research, N-doped TiO2 (N/TiO2) nanoparticles have been synthesized by a sol-gel method. N/TiO2 nanoparticle has been coated with Ag metal by photochemical method. Triethylamine, N(CH3CH2)3, have been used as precursors of Nitrogen, titanium tetraiso-propoxide (TTIP), Ti[OCH(CH3)2]4, used as precursors of titanium and Ag(NO3)2 used as precursors of Silver in synthesis of these nanoparticles. The photocatalytic activity has been perused for degradation of Methyl Orange (MO) as model of natural pollutants. Synthesized nanoparticles were analyzed by X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), Fourier transform spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive of X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and diffuse-reflectance of UV-visible spectroscopy (DRS). Results illustrated that under both visible and UV light, N/TiO2 nanoparticles had medium activity but with coating, the activity in each area efficiently improved. The presence of 1.5% Ag coated on N/TiO2 (with 2:1 mole ratio) resulted to the highest activity under visible and UV irradiation in the catalyst.