Synthesis and characterization of rare earth metal and non-metal co-doped TiO2 nanostructure for photocatalytic degradation of Metronidazole

The harmful effects resulted from the continuous discharge of pharmaceutical compounds in wastewater led to great problems which requireto be rapidly addressed. Herein, doping with rare earth metal Ce and/or nonmetal C, N co-doped TiO2 has been proved to be excellent tool for improvement of the photocatalytic performance of TiO2 in the elimination of wastewater pharmaceutical pollutants. In this regard, the TiO2 nanoparticles have been doped with Ce on one hand and doped with Ce, N, C on the other hand. The photocatalysts were synthesized by sol-gel procedure. The characterization was carried out by FT-IR spectroscopy, XRD, SEM. This doping approach has implications on the optical properties of TiO2, since the band gap of the TiO2 nanoparticles was reduced from 3.2 e.V to 2.6 e.V due to the successful introduction of the dopants C, N, and Ce, which is proved by UV-Visible spectroscopy. Furthermore, the photocatalytic activities of the doped-TiO2 nanoparticles for the degradation of MTZ, as a model of the pharmaceutical compounds have been studied under visible light illumination. The TiO2 nanoparticles doped with Ce, N and C able to decompose MTZ within 120 min following the pseudo-first order, thus demonstrating higher photocatalytic performance in the degradation of the pharmaceutical pollutants.