Influence of synthesis methods on zirconium doped titania photocatalysts

Abstract

Synthesis of various zirconium doped titania based photocatalysts were carried out by adapting different synthetic strategies. Doping is done on commercially available anatase titania, sol-gel titania and template mediated sol gel titania. A comparative study of the various prepared photocataysts was done using physico-chemical characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), surface area- pore volume measurements, UV-VIS Diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), elemental analysis (XRF) and transmission electron microscopic (TEM) studies. The effect of zirconium and preparation methods on the photocatalytic degradation of methylorange is studied extensively. Both the surface properties and photo activity of zirconium doped titania were found to have a great dependence on the preparation methods. Among the different photocatalytic systems, the catalyst prepared by doping in the presence of urea template was found to produce a maximum photodegradation of 97.5%. © Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.