Synthesis of Sn‐doped mesoporous <scp> TiO ₂ </scp> and its performance of photocatalytic degradation of florfenicol

Abstract Herein, mesoporous TiO 2 photocatalysts doped with different amounts of Sn ions were successfully designed and synthesized by the hydrothermal method. The characterization results show that TiO 2 transforms from the anatase phase to the rutile phase after Sn ion doping. The particle size is slightly smaller than that of mesoporous TiO 2 with the Sn element uniformly distributed. It is worth noting that the Sn(2)‐TiO 2 samples exhibit mesoporous pores with diameters ranging from 10 to 30 nm, a high specific surface area of 55.657 m 2 ·g −1 , and abundant oxygen vacancies. Furthermore, the Sn(2)‐TiO 2 sample exhibits the lowest fluorescence intensity. Compared with TiO 2 , the absorption edge of Sn(2)‐TiO 2 redshifts the most, and it has the strongest absorption and response to visible light, minimizing the band gap of the sample to the greatest extent. The effects of Sn doping amount on the photodegradation efficiencies using florfenicol antibiotics were studied. The photocatalytic degradation performance of the Sn(2)‐TiO 2 sample was 2.08 times that of mesoporous TiO 2 with a first‐order reaction feature. The apparent activation energy of the Sn(2)‐TiO 2 sample is estimated to be 26266.92 J mol −1 . The four‐cycle cyclic photodegradation experiments further confirmed the photocatalytic stability and reusability of the Sn(2)‐TiO 2 samples. The above results indicate that the introduction of a mesoporous structure and the doping of Sn ions can effectively enhance the performance of TiO 2 samples in the photodegradation of antibiotics.