Biogenic synthesis of Ag-doped TiO2 photocatalyst using citrus paradisi extract for solar trigged degradation of methylene blue

Abstract

The world has witnessed substantial deterioration of water resources by different effluents. The most reported among effluents that have caused damage to the water resources are azo dyes that need to be expelled by most efficient techniques such as photocatalysis. This specific study has focused on the synthesis and augmentation of TiO₂ for the degradation of methylene blue (MB). In this work TiO₂ was synthesized by biogenic route using the extract of Citrus paradisi and the synthesized metal oxide (TiO₂) was doped with Ag to escalate the photocatalytic degradation of MB. The synthesized biogenic photocatalyst was characterized by employing XRD and FTIR techniques, which confirms the purity of TiO₂. The stability of Ag-doped TiO₂ photocatalyst was investigated by performing Zeta-potential and the surface morphology was studied thorough FE- SEM. The photocatalytic efficiency of the photocatalysts were evaluated using UV-vis-Spectroscopy. The XRD analysis confirmed the phase purity of synthesized TiO₂ and Ag-doped TiO₂. The presence of functional groups associated with the TiO₂ and Ag-doped TiO₂ were also observed through FTIR. The developed photocatalysts via biogenic route were tested for the degradation of MB that exhibited 56.38% for TiO₂ and 85.55% Ag-TiO₂ in 120mins respectively.