Preparation of Iron Doped Titanium Dioxide Coatings via Spin-Coating of Polymeric Precursor and Investigation of their Photocatalytic Activity Under Visible Light Irradiation

Authors

1 Department of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, Institute for Color Science and Technology

2 Materials and Energy Research Center

Abstract

Nanosized titanium dioxide has received much attention because of many applications in semiconductors, sensors, antibacterial and hygienic materials, photocatalysts and solar cells. In this study, pure and iron doped titanium dioxide nanostructured coatings were prepared by spin-coating of polymeric precursor method. Prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FT-IR spectroscopy, UV-Vis spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. The effect of iron addition on their photocatalytic activity under visible light irradiation was investigated by the degradation of methyl orange. Results showed that for the nanostructured coating of pure titanium dioxide prepared by the above method, both anatase and rutile have been observed. While for iron doped nanostructured coatings the anatase phase has been stabilized and rutile phase has been completely excluded. Also, the addition of iron at concentrations less than 1 mole percent increases the TiO2 photocatalytic properties, while higher concentrations decrease the photocatalytic properties. These results are in good agreement wirh the predictions of the absorption edge data and X-ray diffraction pattern of samples. As a result it was found that the optimum amount of iron ions doped in nanostructured titanium dioxide coatings prepared by polymeric precursor spin coating method was determined to be 0.3 mole percent to achieve the best photocatalytic activity.

Keywords