Synthesis of thiol-functionalized TiO2 nanocomposite and photocatalytic degradation for PAH under visible light irradiation

In this paper, a thiol-functionalized nanophotocatalyst MPTES/TiO2 was first synthesized by one-pot method using P123 as a template. X-ray diffraction confirms the complete anatase crystalline of thiol-functionalized TiO2, N2 adsorption–desorption isotherm demonstrated that these materials possess high surface area and mesoporous structure. The results of XPS show that MPTES has been successfully polymerized in mesoporous structured TiO2. The photodegradation of phenanthrene (PHE) was investigated under visible light irradiation (λ > 420 nm) to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of these materials. Based the experiment results of GC–Mass analysis, a possible mechanism was proposed.