Abstract
The current research work is to investigate the photocatalytic efficiency and degradation of ciprofloxacin using WO
/TiO
nanoparticles under visible light irradiation. The nanoparticles of tungsten trioxide (WO
) and its composite with titanium dioxide (TiO
) i.e. WO
/TiO
was prepared by hydrothermal method. Four basic characterizations were performed to study the prepared sample materials. To study the morphology of the prepared samples, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used. The results of SEM clearly showed that tungsten trioxide (WO
) has Rectangular shaped structure. The average size of the pure Tungsten trioxide nanoparticles was about 40–540 nm. The composite of WO
/TiO
has spherical structure. The reason behind that was the addition of TiO
in WO
changes the morphology of pure WO
, and transformed the rectangular structure to a spherical structure. The presence of TiO
changes the position and orientation of the nanorods in all possible directions. For the detailed analysis of the functional groups present in these samples, band gap, and optical properties of these samples, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), ultraviolet visible (UV–VIS) spectroscopy and Photoluminescence (PL) emission spectroscopy was used. UV–Vis spectroscopy results showed that the bandgaps of prepared catalysts vary within the range of 2.76 – 2.5 eV. This decrease in bandgap is directly related with the concentration ratio of TiO
in WO
. The maximum excitation wavelength observed at 440 nm. The maximum degradation efficiency was at 2% of WO
/TiO
composite catalyst due to unique morphological structure and increase rate of photo absorption.