Investigation of adsorption-photocatalytic synergistic mechanism of globular TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 composites by a synergy factor

Synergy is essential to maximize the photocatalytic performance of the catalyst, which makes the preparation of photocatalytic materials with the synergistic effect of adsorption and catalysis become an attractive research direction. Therefore, we have prepared TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 nano-powders by simple Pechini sol-gel method, which can effectively improve the synergistic effect of adsorption and degradation of photocatalytic materials. The results demonstrate that TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 possesses excellent photocatalytic performance and adsorption ability. And it can be deduced that in the TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 system, SiO2 is as for adsorbent, and TiO2 and ZrO2 act synergistically as a photocatalyst. The enhanced photocatalytic ability of TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 is attributed to the acceleration of mass transfer by adsorption process, narrowed bandgap (Eg = 2.9 eV) and effective charge separation rate resulting from the formation of Ti-O-Zr. This work also studied the synergy effect between adsorption and photocatalytic properties in TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2, and synergy factor beta is used to evaluate the synergistic effect. Moreover beta > 1 in first 30 min of visible light irradiation demonstrates that the remarkable synergistic effect exists in TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 compound system.

Automated summary

This study demonstrated the preparation of TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 nano-powders to enhance the synergistic effect of adsorption and degradation in photocatalytic materials. The TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 system showed excellent photocatalytic performance and adsorption ability, with SiO2 acting as an adsorbent and TiO2-ZrO2 acting synergistically as a photocatalyst. The enhanced photocatalytic ability was attributed to factors such as accelerated mass transfer, narrowed bandgap, and effective charge separation rate. The synergy effect between adsorption and photocatalysis was evaluated using the synergy factor beta, showing remarkable synergistic effect in the TiO2-ZrO2-SiO2 compound system.