Photocatalytic activity of Lu3+/TiO2 prepared by ball milling method

Ball milling method was applied to prepare Lu3+/TiO2 photocatalysts. The catalysts were characterized with X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectra (UV-vis DRS), energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method. The photocatalytic activities were determined by the degradation of methylene blue (MB) equipped with a 300 W medium pressure mercury lamp. Results show that the first order reaction rate constants of Lu3+/TiO2 and pure TiO2 are 0.0565 and 0.0263 min−1, respectively, which both were evaluated under the condition of catalysts loading of 0.2 g/L, initial concentration of 25 mg/L for MB, mole ratio of Lu3+/TiO2 of 1.5% and milling time of 4 h. The average crystal sizes of 1.5 mol% Lu3+/TiO2 and pure TiO2 are 18.7 and 19.3 nm, respectively.