| dc.description.abstract | Titanium dioxide, also called titania, is a kind of photocatalyst that can degrade harmful materials into H2O and CO2. In this study, TiO2 sol was prepared by sol-gel method using TiCl4 as precursor and H2O2 as peptizing agent in order to induce the formation of TiO2 nanoparticles that converted from Ti(OH)4 under 95°C. The purpose of this study was to apply sol-gel method to prepare silver-modified TiO2 for enhancement of sol stability, TiO2 particle size distribution, and improvement of photocatalytic activity under UV light and visible light irradiation. The presence of silver can lead to high antibacterial capability. The photocatalysts were characterized by XRD, DLS, SEM, TEM, HRTEM, FTIR, and UV-Vis spectroscopy. We could confirm that our titanium sols are anatase by XRD and HRTEM. And by DLS and HRTEM, we could figure out that the diameters of modified TiO2 are smaller than those of pure TiO2. The Zeta potential of the modified TiO2 is higher than that of pure ones. As a result, the addition of silver could improve the photocatalytic activity and prevented the particles from agglomeration; besides, the sols remained stable and did not precipitates after storage for over a year. It was observed that the optimum Ag to TiO2 ratio was 1 wt%, and the sample showed higher photocatalytic activity under both UV and visible light irradiation. | en_US |