Investigation of photoconversion efficiency of Cu and Ni doped TiO2 thin film in photoelectrochemical cell

This paper presents the investigation on the optimal primary preparation parameters of Cu-Ni bimetallic supported TiO2 photocatalyst on photoconversion efficiency in photoelectrochemical cell (PEC). Three preparation parameters including, water, acid and copper dopant to Titanium tetraisopropoxide molar ratio was investigated. The single and combined impacts of these variables were examined by applying central composite design (CCD) from a response surface method (RSM). Quadratic polynomial regression models were proposed for the analysis of variance (ANOVA) to fit the experimental data in CCD. There was a good agreement in the linear relationship between the experimental and predicted values where model was fitted with high coefficient of determination value of 0.98. Data analysis had demonstrated that water and copper loading were two more effective parameters on the photoconversion efficiency compared to acid. The water molar ratio of 16, acid ratio of 3, and Cu loading of 7 mol were the optimal preparation parameters with maximum efficiency of 3.72 at potential -0.109 V. © 2016 Author(s).