Metal oxide based nanostructures as efficient photocatalyst for the degradation of organic pollutants in wastewater

Abstract

Due to the overuse of pharmaceuticals and their large discharge into the aquatic environment, societal and scientific concerns are growing. Conventional treatment methods are unable to completely remove pollutants from wastewater. Photocatalysis may be a promising and highly successful way for the entirely mineralization of a wide range of pharmaceuticals and other chemical substances from aquatic environments while avoiding the use of carcinogenic chemicals. Composite photocatalytic systems such as Fe2O3/TiO2 are preferred as photocatalysts due to their low band gap, excellent thermal stability, and lack of auto-degradation. Advanced oxidation processes remove various organic pollutants from wastewater by using highly reactive and oxidizing species (H2O2, OH). In this study, a hydrothermal reaction method was used to produce a variety of magnetic iron oxide cores in different shapes and morphology, particularly nano rings (NRis) and nano disks (NDs) were created. A TiO2 shell was formed around the cores using a sol gel template-based technique. After a high-temperature thermal treatment (calcination process), the shell-phase changed from amorphous to anatase, the most photoactive TiO2 crystalline phase.