Abstract

The photo-degradation of phenol was studied employing the TiO2/WO3 semiconductors coupled, activated with visible light.Results show that the photo-degradation efficiency depends on the mixture composition. The best performance was found with aTiO2/-6% WO3 mixture that presented a photo-degradation that was 20 times greater than for TiO2/ commercial alone. This behavior is explained in terms of the increase in the hydrophilic character of the coupled semiconductors, the improvement in the kinetics of separation of the electron/hole pair through the transfer of cationic holes towards the valence band of TiO2/ and, the formation of W(V)species in WO3