A novel Ti/antimony-doped tin oxide nanoparticles electrode prepared by screen printing method and its application in electrochemical degradation of C.I. Acid Red 73

A novel antimony-doped tin oxide nanoparticles electrode (Ti/ATONPs) was fabricated by screen printing method, which was applied in wastewater treatment area for the first time. In contrast with traditional Ti/SnO2-Sb electrode prepared by electrodeposition, Ti/ATONPs electrode possessed smaller grains and crystallite size, remarkable porous structure with 39.9 m2 g−1 surface area and 3.0 nm average pore size as seen by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET). Electrochemical measurements including linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and chronocoulometry (CC) were employed to investigate the electrochemical activity, compared with Ti/SnO2-Sb, Ti/ATONPs owned a higher oxygen evolution potential (2.18 V versus 2.08 V), a lower charge transfer resistance (0.47 Ω versus 13.24 Ω), a larger electrochemically effective surface area (38.97 cm2 cm−2 versus 3.03 cm2 cm−2) and the voltammetric charge analysis indicated that Ti/ATONPs could create more reaction active sites to enhance the electrocatalytic efficiency. To further explore the electrocatalytic oxidation performance, AR 73 was used as target pollutant to monitor the concentration changes with time through UV/vis spectroscopy, the removal of AR 73 degradation and corresponding kinetic constant of Ti/ATONPs electrode was 83.9%, 0.62 h−1 while that of Ti/SnO2-Sb was 65.8%, 0.40 h−1 respectively. These results show that Ti/ATONPs electrode prepared by screen printing method may become a promising electrode in treating wastewater.