Photocatalytic properties of Fe2O3-modified rutile TiO2 nanofibers formed by electrospinning technique

• An ideal strategy to fabricate rutile pashed TiO2 incorporated with Fe3+ has been introduced for dye degradation purposes.
• The catalyst performed well in under both visible and solar light irradiation.
• The solar light gave better results because it contains highly energy rich UV rays.
• The 4wt% Fe3+ combination shows the highest photocatalytic activity for Congo Red degradation.
• The Fe-doped TiO2 nanofibers follow the pseudo-second reaction rate constant relationship.

In this study, we aimed to fabricate rutile phase titania nano-catalysts by electrospinning and further doped them with different concentrations of ferric oxide by precipitation technique. The X-Ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microcopy and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy results of 4wt% ferric oxide modified titania nanofibers suggested that the doping of iron with titania nanofibers was highly achievable. It was observed, that ferric oxide is soluble in its lattice matrix, which provided be the rate determining step for degradation model dye i.e., Congo Red. The results confirmed that titania nanofibers incorporated ferric oxide presents the highest dye degradation efficiency and rate constant values, as compared to those of commercially available titanium nanoparticles and pristine nanofibers.