Metal Oxide Electrospun Nanofibrous Membranes for Effective Dye Degradation and Sustainable Photocatalysis

Abstract

The fabrication of metal oxide nanofibers using (titanium (IV) isopropoxide) and (tin (IV) tert-butoxide) of weight ratio 1:1 precursor in presence of poly (vinyl pyrrolidone) as a binder using a well-known electrospinning technique is reported. The average diameter of TiO2, SnO2, and composite TiO2-SnO2 nanofibers were found to be in the range 75–110 nm. The nanofibers were characterized using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to understand the polymer evaporation temperature and further analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to study the morphology of the nanofibers. The oxidation states of titanium (Ti) and tin (Sn) ions were analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), indicating that the TiO2 undergoes a change even after loading SnO2. The photocatalytic efficiency of the composite TiO2-SnO2 fibers was investigated to study the degradation capabilities under ultraviolet (UV) light towards industrial polluting dyes such as Alcian Blue, Alizarin Red S, Bilirubin, Brilliant Blue, Bromophenol Blue, and Rhodamine B ITC. Rhodamine B showed a significant degradation rate of about 0.0064 min−1 in comparison to the other dyes.

Keywords

• electrospinning
• titanium (IV) di-oxide
• tin (IV) oxide
• doping
• dye degradation
• photocatalysis