Cobalt promoted TiO2/GO for the photocatalytic degradation of oxytetracycline and Congo Red

Wan-Kuen Jo, Santosh Kumar, Mark A. Isaacs, Adam F. Lee, S. Karthikeyan*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A family of titania derived nanocomposites synthesized via sol-gel and hydrothermal routes exhibit excellent performance for the photocatalytic degradation of two important exemplar water pollutants, oxytetracycline and Congo Red. Low loadings of Co3O4 nanoparticles dispersed over the surfaces of anatase TiO2 confer visible light photoactivity for the aqueous phase decomposition of organics through the resulting heterojunction and reduced band gap. Subsequent modification of these Co3O4/TiO2 composites by trace amounts of graphene oxide nanosheets in the presence of a diamine linker further promotes both oxytetracycline and Congo Red photodegradation under simulated solar and visible irradiation, through a combination of enhanced photoresponse and consequent radical generation. Radical quenching and fluorescence experiments implicate holes and hydroxyl radicals as the respective primary and secondary active species responsible for oxidative photodegradation of pollutants.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)159-168
Number of pages10
JournalApplied Catalysis B: Environmental
Volume201
Early online date11 Aug 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2017

Bibliographical note

© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords

  • photocatalysis
  • titania
  • cobalt
  • graphene oxide
  • nanocomposite

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