Novel modified nanophotocatalysts of TiO2 nanoparticles and TiO2/Alginate beads with lanthanides [La, Sm, Y] to degrade the Azo dye Orange G under UV-VIS radiation

Designing novel efficient photocatalysts is the aim of the present work. Different samples of TiO2 anatase nanoparticles modified with rare earths were examined to degrade the azo dye Orange G under a wavelength range of 300–800 nm. The work also consists of designing new hybrid photocatalysts of codoped TiO2 with Nd–Sm and La/Y anatase nanoparticles encapsulated in the alginate polymer matrix. X-Ray diffraction analysis revealed the existence of a pure tetragonal anatase phase. More characterizations were carried out to analyze the obtained nanoparticles such as FTIR, SEM, EDX, and the UV-VIS. As for the Photocatalytic efficiency evaluation, La1 %-TiO2 anatase nanoparticles exhibited the highest decomposition of 96.49 % with a constant rate of 3.065 x10−2 min−1 in 105 min only. The stability test revealed the high stability of all nanophotocatalysts especially La1 %. The First-principles calculations studied doped/codoped anatase TiO2 to get an insight into the effect of doping the structure with rare earth elements on its optical properties. Our paper contains both experimental and theoretical studies to provide a complete work for innovative nanomaterials with physico-chemical characteristics.