Abstract:
TiO
2 is a general semiconductor photocatalyst to remove environmental contaminants for its chemical properties, safety, and non-toxic.However, TiO
2 has wide bandgap, low absorption in visible light region.Since the UV light energy is less than 5% of the solar energy, most of the solar energy can not be absorbed, which restricts the applications of TiO
2 on photocatalytic degradation for contaminants.To address the issue, Fe and Ag are doped to prepare composite TiO
2 microspheres which had lower band gap energy than pure TiO
2 to enhance the absorption of the solar spectrum.By the sol-gel method, the element content of Fe is changed to prepare 5 different samples and fitted the optimal ratio.Then Ag is loaded into the microspheres by Ag
3PO
4.The composite TiO
2/Fe/Ag
3PO
4 microspheres were prepared.50 mL of 10 mg/L RHB solution is configured to test the photocatalytic degradation of 5 samples under the xenon lamp.All the degradation rates can reach over 90% in 1 h.When the proportion of Fe atoms was 5%,the sample shows an excellent photo catalytic degradation activity.The degradation rate was 99% at 30 min while the samples were characterized by XRD、SEM、XPS、DRS、PL.When Fe is 5% doped, the band gap of composite TiO
2 microspheres is 2.85 eV which absorbs the visible light and improves the optical properties.