Effect of silica on the microstructure and photocatalytic properties of titania

A series of TiO2/SiO2 composite with different Ti/Si ratios were prepared by sol–gel technique. The samples were characterized by different analytical techniques such as XRD, FT-IR, BET and XPS. Grain size of anatase TiO2 calculated using Scherrer's formula was found to be in the range of 2.1–8.7 nm, and the content of anatase phase in TiO2 ranges from 45% to 40.1%. The photocatalytic properties on methyl orange (MO) solution were also studied. The degradation rate of the composite is much higher than that of the pure TiO2 in the same conditions.