Photodegradation of Rhodamine B on Sulfur Doped ZnO/TiO2 Nanocomposite Photocatalyst under Visible‐light Irradiation

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Sulfur doped ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposite photocatalysts were synthesized by a facile sol‐gel method. The structure and properties of catalysts were characterized by X‐ray diffraction (XRD), X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV‐vis diffusive reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and N2 desorption‐adsorption isotherm. The XRD study showed that TiO2 was anatase phase and there was no obvious difference in crystal composition of various S‐ZnO/TiO2. The XPS study showed that the Zn element exists as ZnO and S atoms form SO2−4. The prepared samples had mesoporosity revealed by N2 desorption‐adsorption isotherm result. The degradation of Rhodamine B dye under visible light irradiation was chosen as probe reaction to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of the ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposite. The commercial TiO2 photocatalyst (Degussa P25) was taken as standard photocatalyst to contrast the prepared different photocatalyst in current work. The improvement of the photocatalytic activity of S‐ZnO/TiO2 composite photocatalyst can be attributed to the suitable energetic positions between ZnO and TiO2, the acidity site caused by sulfur doping and the enlargement of the specific area. S‐3.0ZnO/TiO2 exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity under visible light irradiation after Zn amount was optimized, which was 2.6 times higher than P25.