Vanadium and Nitrogen Co-Doped Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) with Enhanced Photocatalytic Performance: Potential in Wastewater Treatment

摘要

The vanadium (V) and nitrogen (N) dopants on TiO2 demonstrated superior photocatalytic performance for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye under visible light. The vanadium, V, N-co-doped TiO2 was synthesized by a modified sol-gel method. It revealed that V and N co-doping had a significant effect on the band gap (E-g) of TiO2, where the pristine TiO2 possessed a wide band gap (3.18 eV) compared to V-doped TiO2 (2.89 eV) and N-doped TiO2 (2.87 eV) while the V, N-co-doped TiO2 depicted the narrowest band gap (2.65 eV). The greatly increased specific surface area for the V, N-co-doped TiO2 (103.87 m(2)/g) as compared to. P25 TiO2 (51.68 m(2)/g) also contributed to the major improvement in the MB dye degradation efficiency (0.055 min(-1)). The V, N-co-doped TiO2 exhibit rapid photocatalytic activity for the degradation of MB with almost 99% of degradation in 120 minutes.