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Low temperature ionothermal synthesis of TiO 2 nanomaterials for efficient photocatalytic H 2 production, dye degradation and photoluminescence studies
Author(s) -
Alharthi Fahad A.,
Nagaraju G.,
Vinay S P,
AlZaqri Nabil,
Alsalme Ali
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of energy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.808
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1099-114X
pISSN - 0363-907X
DOI - 10.1002/er.5471
Subject(s) - photoluminescence , photocatalysis , anatase , materials science , ionic liquid , nanomaterials , fourier transform infrared spectroscopy , crystallite , band gap , rutile , chemical engineering , hydrogen production , nanoparticle , analytical chemistry (journal) , nanotechnology , catalysis , chemistry , organic chemistry , optoelectronics , engineering , metallurgy
Summary The photocatalytic hydrogen generation is a novel, eco‐friendly and favourable method for production of green and clean energy using light energy. In this direction, we report low‐temperature ionothermal method for the preparation of TiO 2 nanoparticles (NPs) using methoxy ethyl methyl imidazolium tris (pentafluoroethyl) trifluoro phosphate (MOEMINtf 2 ) as an ionic liquid (IL) at 120°C for 1 day. The synthesized nanomaterials were examined using different spectrochemical methods like UV‐DRS, XRD, FT‐IR, TEM, BET and TGA‐DTA techniques. The mixed phase TiO 2 is obtained with 81.7% of anatase and 18.3% of rutile phase by the XRD studies, and average crystallite size is found to be ∼7 nm. The stretching of Ti‐O bond (∼555 cm −1 ) and few other bands related to ionic liquid were confirmed by FTIR spectrum. The band gap energy was observed to be ∼3.38 eV by UV‐DRS analysis. TEM images reveal spherical shape with an average particles size of about 10 nm. Photocatalytic H 2 generation was carried out using TiO 2 NPs and observed the generation of 553 μmol h −1 g −1 via water splitting reaction. Furthermore, the prepared TiO 2 NPs employed for the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue dye (84.54%), and photoluminescence studies confirms the obtained material can be used in optoelectronic applications with green emission.