In the present work, we have reported a facile and large-scale synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) through urea-assisted thermal decomposition of titanium oxysulphate. We have successfully synthesized TiO2 NPs by using this effective route with different weight ratios of titanium oxysulphate: urea. The structures and properties of TiO2 NPs were confirmed by scanning electron microscope) (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), ultra violet–visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), and photoluminescence (Pl) techniques. XRD demonstrated that TiO2 NPs holds of anatase crystal phase with crystallizing size 14–19 nm even after heating at 600 °C. TGA, SEM, and TEM images reveal urea’s role, which controls the size, morphology, and aggregation of TiO2 NPs during the thermal decomposition. These TiO2 NPs were employed for photodegradation of Methyl Orange (MO) in the presence of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. An interesting find was that the TiO2 NPs exhibited better photocatalytic activity and excellent recycling stability over several photodegradation cycles. Furthermore, the present method has a great perspective to be used as an efficient method for large-scale synthesis of TiO2 NPs.

In this work, we developed a very simple and novel approach for synthesizing TiO2-ZnO nanocomposites via the urea-assisted thermal decomposition of titanium oxysulphate and zinc acetate at different weight ratios. The synthesized nanocomposite samples were studied by means of HR-TEM, XRD, STEM, UV–Vis DRS, PL and EDS. The observed results demonstrate that the TiO2-ZnO nanocomposite consists of an anatase crystal phase of TiO2 with a crystallite size of 10–15 nm. Combined characterization, including UV–Vis DRS, STEM, EDS and HR-TEM, revealed the successful formation of a heterojunction between TiO2 and ZnO and an improvement in UV spectrum absorption. The photocatalytic activity was explored using MO degradation under ultraviolet light illumination. The results of the optimized TiO2-ZnO nanocomposite show excellent photocatalytic activity and photostability over a number of degradation reaction cycles. In addition, the current approach has immense potential to be used as a proficient method for synthesizing mixed metal oxide nanocomposites.

The photocatalytic removal of water contaminants for ecological systems has become essential in the past few decades. Consequently, for commercialization, cost-efficient, earth-abundant and easy to synthesize photocatalysts for dye degradation are of urgent need. We have demonstrated a simple and feasible approach for fabricating TiO2–SnO2 nanocomposite photocatalysts via urea-assisted-thermal-decomposition with different mass ratios. The as-synthesized materials were characterized by different physicochemical techniques. The phase formation and crystallite size were calculated by using XRD. The STEM, UV-Vis, DRS, HR-TEM and EDS revealed the effective formation of the heterojunction between TiO2 and SnO2, and enrichment in the UV-absorption spectrum. All synthesized materials were used for the photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange (MO) under UV light. The optimized results of the TiO2–SnO2 nanocomposite showed excellent photostability and photocatalytic activity over a number of degradation-reaction cycles of methyl-orange (MO) dye under the illumination of ultraviolet light. In addition, the recent method has great potential to be applied as a proficient method for mixed-metal-oxide-nanocomposite synthesis.

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