Enhanced charge carrier efficiency and solar light-induced photocatalytic activity of TiO2 nanoparticles through doping of silver nanoclusters and C-N-S nonmetals

摘要

C-N-S-tridoped TiO2 nanoparticles is synthesized via sol-gel method using cysteine as nonmetals source. Moreover, to suppress recombination of photogenerated charge carriers, silver nanoclusters are deposited over C-N-S-tridoped TiO2 via photodeposition technique and the catalyst Ag@C,N,S-TiO2 is developed. The prepared catalysts are characterized by XRD, SEM-EDAX, TEM, XPS, IR, Raman, UV-vis DRS, and N-2 adsorption-desorption isotherms. Our findings show that Ag@C,N,S-TiO2 catalyst has an excellent and outstanding photocatalytic performance compared to that of pure TiO2 and commercial TiO2 P25 which the reason is attributed to improved visible-light harvesting, enhanced organic pollutant adsorption and increased photo-efficiency in separation of the charge carriers. (C) 2015 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.