Synthesis of Calcium Doped TiO2 Nanomaterials and Their Visible Light Degradation Property

Calcium with low charge density doped TiO 2 (Ca-TiO 2 ) mesoporous nanomaterials with high specific surface areas were successfully synthesized via a simple and effective solid-state reaction route.The properties of these nanomaterials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), scaning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), N 2 absorption-desorption, ultraviolet visible light spectroscopy (UV-Vis) and infrared spectrum (IR).The results show that the samples possess the high specific surface area of 101.4m 2 /g, spherical nanosize of 9~16 nm, the structure of anatase TiO 2 , and the doped Ca 2+ ion has been incorporated into the lattice or positioned on an interstitial lattice site of TiO 2 with the changes of the amounts of calcium.Interestingly, the IR displays that the stretching vibrational peaks at ~1630cm -1 are assignable to the red shift of the -OH bond coming from the increasing of the doped calcium amount and the adsorption capacity of thiophene.Moreover, compared with the pure titanium dioxide, the Ca-TiO 2 nanomaterials show excellent photocatalytic activities upon thiophene.For the Ca-TiO 2 (Ca:Ti=1:7) photocatalyst, 90.2% of the initial thiophene can be degraded by visible light irradiation at 25 o C for 50 min.