Abstract: The cerium ion (Ce4+) doped titania sol and nanocrystallites were prepared by chemical coprecipitation-peptization and hydrothermal synthesis methods, respectively. The X-ray diffraction pattern shows that Ce4+-TiO2 xerogel powder has semicrystalline structure and thermal sintering sample has crystalline structure. Ce4+-TiO2 nanocrystallites are composed of the major anatase phase titania (88.82 wt pct) and a small amount of crystalline cerium titanate. AFM micrograph shows that primary particle size of well-dispersed ultrafine sol particles is below 15 nm in diameter. The particle sizes are 30 nm for xerogel sample and 70 nm for nanocrystallites sample, which is different from the estimated values (2.41 nm and 4.53 nm) by XRD Scherrer's formula. The difference is mainly due to aggregation of nanocrystallites. The experimental results exhibit that photocatalysts of Ce4+-TiO2 sol and nanocrystallites have the ability to photodegrade reactive brilliant red dye (X-3B ) under visible light irradiation with the ion-TiO2/VIS/dye system. Moreover, Ce4+ doped titania sol has shown higher efficiency than the nanocrystallites sample in respect of potocatalytic activity. Meanwhile, dye photodegradation mechanisms are proposed to different photocatalytic reaction systems, which are dye photosensitization, ion-dye photosensitization and interband photocatalysis & dye photosensitization with respect to TiO2 nanocrystallites, Ce4+-TiO2 sol and Ce4+-TiO2 nanocrystallites system.

Key words: Photocatalytic activity, Sol, Nanocrystallites, Photosensitization, Reaction mechanism