Hydrothermal-Assisted Synthesis of TiO2@NiMoO4 Nanocomposites and Evaluation of Their Photocatalysis Properties
In the current study, hydrothermal assistance was successfully applied to synthesize TiO2 nanoparticles and TiO2@NiMoO4 nanocomposites in the presence of beet juice as the green surfactant, as well as green sensitizer. Also, different beet juice concentrations were tested to find optimum morphology and particle size. In addition, the structural and morphological properties of as-obtained products were characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The possibility of adding NiMoO4 to TiO2 nanoparticles was explored in order to enhance photocatalytic and optical properties. Degradation results showed that destruction percentages of methylene blue (MB) under visible light were 89% and 98% for TiO2 nanoparticles and TiO2@NiMoO4 nanocomposites, respectively. Improving the photocatalysis yield of TiO2 can be described as the result of electron and hole transformation between TiO2 to NiMoO4 , which facilitates the separation of the electron–hole pairs. FTIR spectroscopy results confirmed the degradation of MB by TiO2@NiMoO4 nanocomposites. The UV–Vis results showed that coupling of NiMoO4 causes to create red-shift in absorption edge.