Cr Doped TiO2 Supported on TUD-1 Photocatalyst for Dye Photodegradation

New visible light driven photocatalysts of 1 mol% cr doped tio2 supported on tud-1 have been successfully synthesized. the cr-tio2/xtud-1 (x = 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50) photocatalysts were prepared via surfactant-free sol-gel method followed by wet impregnation procedures. xrd analysis revealed that both tio2 and cr were incorporated in the highly porous siliceous matrix. ftir analysis showed the existence of si-o-ti in all the materials. as observed, tetrahedral-coordinated ti species were dominant in cr-tio2/10tud-1, cr-tio2/20tud-1 and cr-tio2/30tud-1. meanwhile, octahedral- coordinated ti species were the dominant species in cr-tio2/40tud-1 and cr-tio2/50tud-1. it has been demonstrated that the amount of tud-1 as photocatalyst support affected the wavelength response and the bandgap energy of the resulting materials. all the materials have bandgap energy of ~2.9 ev. the photocatalytic performance of the synthesized materials was tested out in dye photodegradation under visible light irradiation at 298 k for 5 hours. results showed that all cr-tio2/tud-1 materials had higher photocatalytic activity than that of cr-tio2. this could be explained by the high surface area and porosity provided by tud-1 in enhancing the adsorption and diffusivities of the dye molecules, hence leading to the promising photocatalytic activity. among the materials prepared, cr-tio2/30tud-1 appeared as the most superior photocatalyst which gave the highest dye photodegradation.