Sunlight assisted photoelectrocatalytic degradation of benzoic acid using stratified WO3/TiO2 thin films

The stratified WO3/TiO2 thin films have been deposited onto glass and FTO coated glass substrates using simple chemical a spray pyrolysis method. The structural, morphological, compositional and photoelectrocatalytic properties of the stratified WO3/TiO2 thin films are studied. The photoelectrochemical (PEC) study shows that, both short circuit current (Isc) and open circuit voltage (Voc) are (Isc =1.192 mA and Voc =0.925 V) relatively high at 50 ml spraying quantity of TiO2 solution on pre-deposited WO3. XRD analysis confirms that films are polycrystalline with monoclinic and tetragonal crystal structures for WO3 and TiO2 respectively. Specific surface area of 72.14 m2 g−1 is measured by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) technique. Photoelectrocatalytic degradation of benzoic acid (BA) dye in aqueous solutions is studied. The end result shows that the degradation percentage of benzoic acid (BA) using stratified WO3/TiO2 photoelectrode has reached 66% under sunlight illumination after 320 min. The amount of degradation is confirmed by COD analysis.