Nickel modified one-dimensional Tio2 nanostructures for enhanced photocatalysis under visible light

Abstract

In our society, we have been going through two main problems i.e. environmental pollution and energy crisis. Fabrication of the materials which can help to generate energy from the sustainable and greener energy sources, and also capable of diminishing the pollutants from the environment is very essential. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is one the perfect examples for such a material in the form of different nano-structures. But problem associated with TiO2 is its bandgap of ca. 3.2 eV, which only can be activated under the UV light illumination. In addition, high charge carrier recombination is also another issue. Therefore, modification of TiO2 nanostructures as well as its bandgap is essential to increase its light absorption toward the visible region of the sunlight. To fulfil the above purposes, pure TiO2 and Ni-modified TiO2 nanorods were synthesized and characterized using FTIR, PXRD, UV-Visible in DRS method and photoluminescence techniques. UV-Visible spectra showed enhanced visible light harvesting upon Ni modification of the TiO2 nanorods as compared to the same for the pure one. On the other hand, lower intensity of the photoluminescence spectrum for the Ni-modified TiO2 convincingly proves minimized recombinations of the photo-generated electron-hole pairs.