Carbon coated titanium dioxide (CC-TiO2) as an efficient material for photocatalytic degradation

Abstract

TiO₂ is an efficient, cost effective, and common photocatalyst. But there are some technical issues with TiO₂ such as fast charge recombination, wide band gap, and low surface area of bulk TiO₂ which limit the practical application of TiO₂ photocatalysts. Carbon coating of TiO₂ is found to provide many advantages such as high absorptivity, high photocatalytic activity, stability of the anatase phase, etc. In the present study, carbon coated titanium dioxide (CC-TiO₂) is fabricated by colloidal processing using TiO₂ powder and sucrose followed by heat treatment in an argon atmosphere at different temperatures. Samples are characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, BET technique, Raman spectroscopy, field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) and field emission gun transmission electron microscopy (FEG-TEM), respectively. The photocatalytic activity of CC-TiO₂ is studied for cationic dyes (MB (methylene blue) and CV (crystal violet)). The sample heat treated at 800 °C shows the highest photocatalytic activity. This particular sample exhibited the lowest optical band gap compared with all other heat-treated samples.