Exploring the Synergy of B, Ce Dopants in Codoped Titanium Dioxide Multifunctional Photocatalysts for Antibiotic Degradation and Microbial Disinfection Under Solar Light

Abstract

An eco-friendly, controllable citrate-EDTA complexing sol–gel method is employed to systematically synthesize a series of B<inf>x</inf>Ce<inf>1−x</inf>TiO<inf>2</inf> (x = 0.9, 0.8, 0.7 at%) codoped photocatalysts. The degradation of ciprofloxacin (CIP) and norfloxacin (NOR) antibiotics, as well as Escherichia coli disinfection under sunlight, is assessed using these synthesized codoped photocatalysts. After physicochemical characterization of the synthesized catalysts for particle size, surface area, morphology, crystal structure, surface chemistry, bandgap energy values, and recombination, it is evident that the codoping has improved the visible light absorption, reduced the recombination, and promoted higher crystallinity as well as anatase phase content. The codoped catalysts also demonstrate an enhanced photocatalytic activity under solar light with regard to the degradation of the chosen antibiotics when compared to the performance of the monodoped counterparts or the latest generation catalysts from the literature. The highest degradation performance (≈98%) is shown by B<inf>0.8</inf>Ce<inf>0.2</inf>TiO<inf>2</inf> in the case of CIP and B<inf>0.9</inf>Ce<inf>0.1</inf>TiO<inf>2</inf> in the case of NOR. Also, in the case of microbial disinfection, these codoped catalysts are much better (by a factor of ≈10) than that of the monodoped catalysts. © 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.