Silver Doped Titania Materials on Clay Support for Enhanced Visible Light Photocatalysis

This paper presents a study on the development of silver doped titania materials on clay support and their application for phenol photooxidation. Silver was incorporated by direct calcination of the sol-gel titania with silver nitrate added in various amounts. The silver ion was reduced during calcination of the sol-gel material via decomposition of silver nitrate. The structural characters of materials were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS). The photocatalytic activity of silver doped titania photocatalyst and that of this mixture on clay support for phenol degradation were examined. The addition of increasing amounts of silver, for batches of samples, significantly increases the rate of degradation of phenol. This is attributed to the increasing visible absorption capacity due to the presence of silver nanoparticles. The better separation between electrons and holes on the modified TiO2 surface allowed more efficiency for the oxidation reactions. [DOI: 10.1380/ejssnt.2011.454]