Preparation and Photocatalytic Properties of Ce/g-C3N4 Co-doped TiO2 Nanomaterials

Abstract A Ce/TiO 2 /g-C 3 N 4 composite material was prepared by sol-gel method using g-C 3 N 4 as support and Ce(NH 4 ) 2 (NO 3 ) 6 as dopant. The structural and morphological characterization of the samples was detected by TEM, XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis. RhB was selected as the target pollutant, the photocatalytic and renewable properties of the samples driven by visible light were evaluated. The results showed that Ce/TiO 2 /g-C 3 N 4 had excellent heterojunction structure. The ternary components cooperate with each other to show excellent photocatalytic performance for RhB solution with molar concentration of 0.5×10 −5 mol·L −1 under the condition of dosage of 20.0mg, pH 5.0 and visible light-driven 180min. The degradation rate of RhB was 99.3% better than that of g-C 3 N 4 , TiO 2 and Ce/TiO 2 . Cyclic degradation experiments indicated that the Ce/TiO 2 /g-C 3 N 4 had high photocatalysis stability and reusability. Active group capture experiments revealed that ·O 2 - was the main active species in the photocatalytic degradation of RhB over Ce/TiO 2 /g-C 3 N 4 , and the corresponding contribution rate of ·O 2 - was 84.1%.