Microemulsion Synthesis of Nanosized TiO2 Particles Doping with Rare-Earth and their Photocatalytic Activity

Microemulsion is the easiest and cleanest of the popular methods of synthesizing nanomaterial. This work synthesized the nanosized La-TiO2 and Ce-TiO2 particles through the hydrolyzation of tetrabutyl titanate in a Triton X-100/n-hexanol/cyclohexane/water reverse microemulsion. The particles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and thermogravimetry (TG). The photocatalytic activity was evaluated by photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange (MO) under ultraviolet light and visible light irradiation. The results showed that reverse microemulsion produced the nanosized and well-separated particles, which are obviously in degrading MO. Comparing the pure TiO2 with doping TiO2, the doping ones are smaller and have better photocatalytic activity, which was best at the molar content of 0.1% for La, whereas for Ce it was 0.5%.