Photocatalytic performance of nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide nanostructures prepared by sol-gel method

Abstract

A sol-gel method was used to prepare nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide nanoparticle using tetrabutyl titanate as the titanium source and urea as the nitrogen source. The structure and properties of the samples were characterized by modern testing methods. The photocatalytic performance of N-doped titanium dioxide nanoparticle was evaluated by taking Polyacrylic amide (PAM) in the wastewater from petroleum extraction as the target degradation product. The results show that, after N-nano TiO₂ is calcined at 650 °C, the TiO₂ is mainly of anatase type, with a large amount of rutile titanium dioxide nanoparticle between the crystals, and the average grain size decreases from 25.9 nm to 16.8 nm. Under visible light, the removal rate of N-TiO₂ on PAM simulated wastewater for 3 h was determined to have been 59% and this is increased to 79.8%. After the photocatalyst was regenerated by ultraviolet irradiation, the removal rate of pollutants still reached 74.2%.

Keywords:

• Sol-gel
• titanium dioxide
• photocatalysis
• nitrogen doping
• PAM

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant no. 51378205], and the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars of China [Grant no. 51522402].