Surfactant-Free Hydrothermal Synthesis of Mesoporous Niobia Samples and Their Photoinduced Decomposition of Terephthalic Acid (TPA)

This study introduces a low temperature surfactant-free hydrothermal method to synthesize mesoporous Nb₂O₅ photocatalysts using NbCl₅ and H₂O₂ as precursors that are subsequently calcinated at 300, 400 and 450 °C and are assigned as mNb₂O₅-300, mNb₂O₅-400 and mNb₂O₅-450, respectively. Commercial niobia sample was used as reference sample for comparison purpose. All of materials were characterized by XRD, SEM, UV–Vis DRS, FTIR, TG/DTG and BET techniques. The synthesized Nb₂O₅ particles especially mNb₂O₅-300 sample shows a high surface area (240 m²/g), a large pore volume (0.21 cm³/g) and an identifying morphology of these features. Photocatalytic decomposition of terephthalic acid was evaluated using UV–Vis spectrophotometer. The photocatalytic reactions followed pseudo-first-order kinetics with an apparent rate constant of k = 105 × 10^?3 min^?1 for mNb₂O₅-300 sample with the highest activity among all samples at natural pH (pH = 6). Meanwhile, it was observed that optimum pH of 4 resulted in fast photocatalytic reaction for mNb₂O₅-300 sample.