Effect of titanium dioxide and gadolinium dopants on photocatalytic behavior for acriflavine dye

Herein, we report the experimental methodology to optimize the operational parameters of the photocatalytic degradation of acriflavine dye using TiO2 and Gd3+ as dopant. A series of Gd3+ doped TiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized via hydrothermal route and characterized using various techniques like FT-IR, UV, XRD, FESEM and EDS. It is observed that synthesized particles are in the range of 25–30 nm with spherical shape in nature. TiO2 has rutile phase and the average particle size was estimated from Scherrer's equation. Energy bandgap was estimated using Tauc's plot. The photodegradation was carried out under UV light in pseudofirst order condition. To understand the kinetics, four experimental parameters were chosen as independent variables like percentage of dopant, initial concentration of dye, dosage of catalyst and pH of reaction medium. The degradation efficiency of 92% was observed for 0.5% Gd doped TiO2 at catalyst dosage of 0.3 g/dm3, pH 10 and dye concentration of 3 × 10−6 mol/dm3. It is observed that, the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 can be increased by using gadolinium as dopant only in optimum concentration. Further, this photocatalyst can be employed to degrade other organic pollutants.