Abstract
Heterostructured photocatalysts stand out for their ability to degrade various organic compounds in the treatment of wastewater. In this context, the purpose of this work was to produce titanate-ferrite heterostructured composites by in situ hydrothermal synthesis for application in the photo-Fenton process. The synthesized materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, specific surface area (by BET) and transmission electron microscopy. The in situ synthesis of SrTiO3-CoFe2O4 and SrTiO3-NiFe2O4 was developed here in a novel way, successfully resulting in heterostructured systems with no secondary phases and a highly homogeneous distribution of the constituent phases with average nanometric size particles. Moreover, this new method was found to be highly reproducible. The photocatalytic activity of the synthesized composites was analyzed based on the degradation of Rhodamine B dye using visible light. The best photocatalytic activity was exhibited by the SrTiO3-CoFe2O4 system, which degraded 82% of the dye.
Keywords:
hydrothermal method; heterostructures; strontium titanate; ferrites; photocatalysis
