Effect of metal-support interaction on the structural and enhanced photocatalytic performance of mesoporous M–TiO2/SBA-16 (M = Ag and Fe)

In this paper, a series of metal supported TiO 2 /SBA-16 photocatalysts were successfully synthesized by wet impregnation method. The synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectra, N 2 adsorption–desorption, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV–visible absorption spectra (UV-vis) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). It was found that SBA-16 retained the ordered mesostructure after modification. The results shown that loading different metal elements was found to have significant influences on the crystallographic structure and physical properties. Moreover, the prepared materials were evaluated on photodegradation of Rhodamine B (RhB). Experiment results showed that the degradation of RhB by these catalysts follows the pseudo-first-order kinetic model. The effect of metal element on photocatalytic activity can be attributed that the appropriate amounts of metal concentration can enhance the photocurrent due to the reduced electron–hole recombination, which can improve the efficiency of photocatalytic reactions.