Novel TiO2-based composite co-catalysts for solar driven water purification

Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology (FKIT), Zagreb, Croatia

1. Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology (FKIT), Zagreb, Croatia

2. University of Girona, Spain

Harvesting a broader spectrum of solar irradiation for TiO2 utilization in environmental purposes considers the lowering of band gap of applied material, whilst inhibiting the recombination of photogenerated charges. Several strategies, including: surface modification, nonmetals incorporation, doping with metals, dye sensitizing and composites with other semiconductors, may be applied. The latter offers viable solution for set tasks, particularly when using photocatalytically active semiconductors possessing significantly lower band gap than TiO2. Among them, SnS2, BiVO4 and α-Fe2O3 are rather innocuous, their conduction bands are more negative than that of TiO2, ensuring fast and efficient injection of electrons. The effectiveness of such composite materials in solar driven water treatment may be enhanced with additional co-catalyst material, graphene oxide (and its reduced form – GO/RGO), ensuring an increase in the surface area as well as reduction of photogenerated electrone/hole (e-/h+) pairs, and providing durable properties through consecutive runs. The prepared composites will be inspected for their structure, morphology, composition and optical properties by: FTIR, TGA, SEM/EDXS, XRD, AFM, XPS and DRS. Solar driven water treatment using as-prepared composite photocatalysts will be focused on the removal/degradation of emerging OMPs included in the Watch list of EU WFD.

Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Girona, Spain – 6 months