Structural and optical properties of TiO2 nanoparticles co-doped CoCu for photocatalytic activity.

The aim of the present study is to obtain the TiO2 nanoparticles doped with different concentrations of CoCu-doped by means co-precipitation technique, and to investigate the structural and optical properties. The nanoparticles were characterized using several methods such as X-ray diffraction (X-RD) for structural properties, UV-Vis, and FTIR measurements for determining the bandgap energy and functional group. The nanoparticles were irradiated by ultra violet light with various time irradiations to study the degradation of photocatalytic activity. From X-RD results, the addition small concentration of CoCu into the TiO2 reduces the intensity of diffraction peak, and increases the bandwidth spectrum of X-RD. Also, small peak diffraction of TiCuO was observed in the X-RD spectra. The bandgap energy of TiO2 nanoparticles decreased from 3.34 eV to 2.89 eV after the nanoparticle were doped by 1 wt % of copper. Photocatalytic activity results show the highest degradation at the concentration of Cu 3