Fabrication of titanium doped BiVO4 as a novel visible light driven photocatalyst for degradation of residual tetracycline pollutant

In this study, titanium (Ti) was used as an active dopant to incorporate into BiVO 4 lattice using the hydrothermal method. The synthesized BiVO 4 and Ti–BiVO 4 with 1, 5 and 10 wt% of Ti dopants have been applied for photocatalytic decomposition of Tetracycline under visible light irradiation. The characterized results showed that this synthesized BiVO 4 and Ti–BiVO 4 materials existed in a form of spherical particles. The particle sizes of the Ti–BiVO 4 were much bigger than that of the BiVO 4 . However, Ti dopants effectively enhanced visible light absorption, decreased band gap energy as well as prevented electron-hole recombination of the BiVO 4 leading to increase in photocatalytic activities of the doped materials. The obtained results from photocatalytic experiments indicated that the 5Ti–BiVO 4 , whose weight ratio of Ti was 5%, was the best material for TC degradation (78.49%). Recycling tests were consecutively carried out in 4 runs to demonstrate the stability of the BiVO 4 photocatalyst with 5 wt% of Ti dopant.