impact of silver ions doping and calcination on the physicochemical characteristics of tio2 nanoparticles with photocatalytic and regeneration potential

Visible light-driven ag^+ doped tio2 photocatalysts were successfully prepared with modified low-cost liquid impregnation (li) method yielding up to 95 % product. the native and newly synthesized photocatalysts were calcined at various temperatures and characterized using diffused reflectance spectroscopy (uv/vis-drs), xrd, xps, tem, edx, xrf, and phpzc analyses. the xrd results for all samples revealed that the anatase phase was dominant at all calcination temperatures. the ag^+ doping reduced the bandgap energy to 2.88 ev, which significantly enhanced the photocatalytic efficiency towards methylene blue (mb) under compact fluorescent light. the photocatalytic efficacy of the nano-catalysts was also tested using a binary solution containing a model dye (mb) and cd^2+ under ordinary compact fluorescent light. the presence of competitive ions i.e. cd^2+ increased the mb degradation up to 4 folds under the ambient conditions whereby the maximum amount of mb adsorbed by nano-catalysts reached 46 mg/g. the high-temperature combustion method was found more effective for the regeneration of tio2 photocatalysts compared to the chemical regeneration. the reusable character of the regenerated samples posed a significant impact on the current work to be applied in wastewater treatment in bulk.