RESEARCH PAPER Effect of silica/titania ratio on enhanced photooxidation of industrial hazardous materials by microwave treated mesoporous SBA-15/TiO 2 nanocomposites Akansha Mehta . Amit Mishra . Manisha Sharma . Satnam Singh . Soumen Basu Received: 19 May 2016 / Accepted: 15 July 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 Abstract In this study microwave assisted technique has been adopted for the synthesis of different weight ratios of TiO 2 dispersed on Santa barbara amorphous- 15 (SBA-15) support. Morphological study revealed TiO 2 particles (4–10 nm) uniformly distributed on SBA-15 while increases in SBA-15 content results in higher specific surface area (524–237 m 2 /g). The diffraction intensity of 101 plane of anatase poly- morph was seen increasing with increase in TiO 2 ratio. All the photocatalysts were having a mesoporous nature and follow the Langmuir IV isotherm, SBA-15 posses the highest pore volume (0.93 cm 3 g -1 ) which consistently decreased with TiO 2 content and was lowest (0.50 cm 3 g -1 ) in case of 5 wt% of TiO 2 followed by P25 (0.45 cm 3 g -1 ) while pore diameter increased after TiO 2 incorporation due to pore strain. The photocatalytic activity of the nanocomposites were analysed for the photodegradation of alizarin dye and pentachlorophenol under UV light irradia- tion. The reaction kinetics suggested the highest efficiency (98 % for alizarin and 94 % for PCP) of 5 wt% TiO 2 compared to other photocatalysts, these nanocomposites were reused for several cycles, which is most important for heterogeneous photocat- alytic degradation reaction. Keywords Microwave assisted synthesis Á Mesoporous material Á SBA-15/TiO 2 Á Alizarin dye Á Pentachlorophenol Á Photocatalytic degradation Introduction Pollution by organic dyes and chlorocompounds has been considered as a major threat to aquatic life (Chen et al. 2011) so, there is an immediate need to develop some efficient photocatalyst to detoxify these pollu- tants (Pandarus et al. 2011). Metal oxide based semiconductor photocatalyst are considered as poten- tial materials for environmental remediation to reduce environmental toxicity caused by various hazardous industrial discharge. After the discovery of Honda Fujishima effect during the early seventies, titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) has got vivid attention because of its stability, resistance to photo-corrosion, abundance and band gap (E g ) (Watanabe et al. 1999). Several parameters like lower surface area, agglomeration of nanoparticles and defective crystal structure retarded the photocatalytic activity of TiO 2 . Numerous strate- gies like loading of TiO 2 on the mesoporous material (clay, activated carbon, zeolites, silica etc.), use of surfactants and synthesis of less defective surfaces Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11051-016-3523-x) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. A. Mehta Á A. Mishra Á M. Sharma Á S. Singh Á S. Basu (&) School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Thapar University, Patiala 147004, India e-mail: soumen.basu@thapar.edu 123 J Nanopart Res (2016) 18:209 DOI 10.1007/s11051-016-3523-x