Study on Structural and Optical Properties of Ni and Mn Codoped TiO2 Nanomaterials and Its Application in Visible Light Photocatalytic Activity of Indigo Caramine Dye

Abstract

Article history: Received 20 April 2019 Accepted 06 May 2019 Available online 16 May 2019 To enhance the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 in visible light, nickel and manganese codoped TiO2 (NMTs) and undoped TiO2 nanomaterials were synthesized by varying dopant concentrations using a solgel method. As prepared nano materials were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and its results shows anatase and rutile mixed phase was observed for codoped catalyst samples. Rough morphology, irregular particle shape and elemental composition of catalyst were identified with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) respectively. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) result revealed that the substitutional doping of Mn2+ and Ni2+ into TiO2 lattice by replacing Ti4+ in TiO2 lattice. This was confirmed by shifting of stretching frequencies of Ti-O-Ti from 569 cm-1 – 608 cm-1. The catalyst (NMT2) exhibits least band gap ( 2.7 eV), less particle size (6.5 nm) with high surface area (135.70 m2/g) when compared to undoped TiO2 (3.2 ev, 18.3 nm, 64.09 m2/g), which were determined by UV-visible diffused reflectance spectroscopy (UV Vis-DRS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) respectively. Based on the characterization results the efficiency of codoped catalyst were exhibits better photocatalytic degradation of indigo caramine (IC). The results show that IC has degraded within 90 minutes at doping concentrations 1.0 wt% of Ni2+ ion and 0.25 wt% of Mn2+ ion in TiO2 (NMT2) at an optimum reaction parameter pH-3, catalyst dosage 0.080 g/L and at IC dye concentration of 0.020 g/L.