Environmental pollution from pharmaceutical and medical facilities are of constant concern. Significant research has been invested in designing new materials that can remove these pollutants through either capture or decontamination of the pollutants. TiO2 is a semi-conductor that has been shown to have great photocatalytic activity for degradation of many different organic compounds. The main limitation of TiO2 is the large band gap of the material, 3.20eV for anatase and 3.03eV for rutile phase. This limits the TiO2 photoactivity to UV light region. Many different methods of improving the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 have been explored. Multiple studies have shown that incorporation of silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) onto the TiO2 improves the visible light absorption of the catalyst. Another study has shown incorporation of the conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) onto TiO2 nanofibers (NFs) improves the efficiency of the catalyst by reducing recombination events of UV light generated electron/hole pairs. In this work, a combination of enhancement of visible light absorption and improved electron/holes separation was explored using TiO2 NFs as the catalyst. Both Ag (NPs) and PEDOT were grown onto TiO2 NFs to enhance the visible light absorption and improve the electron/hole separation. Fabricated Ag-TiO2 and PEDOT-TiO2 NFs show enhanced photo-activity in visible light with half-lives of 257 and 217 mins respectively compared to bare TiO2 NFs with a half-life of 693 mins. Ag NPs were added at different steps in the total synthesis and the effects on the photocatalytic activity was evaluated against a model pharmaceutical agent, phenazopyridine (PAP).

Silver (Ag) enhanced poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) infused TiO2 nanofibers for improved photocatalytic degradation of chemical pollutants

255th National Meeting (2018)

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