Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Hybrid Nanocomposite containing Modified Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles with Copper and Phthalocyanine Pigment

Titanium dioxide-containing hybrid nanocomposites have been considered for their various applications in semiconductors, sensors, antibacterial and hygienic materials, photocatalysts, and solar cells. In this study, a new hybrid nanocomposite containing titanium dioxide nanoparticles modified with copper metal and the organic pigment phthalocyanine was successfully synthesized and characterized. For this purpose, first titanium dioxide nanoparticles modified with copper metal were prepared by the sol-gel method. Then a new hybrid nanocomposite was synthesized using modified nanoparticles by chemical precipitation method. Characterization of modified nanoparticles and synthesized hybrid nanocomposites has been done using X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, FT-IR spectroscopy, EDX analysis, reflection spectroscopy, concurrent thermal analysis (TG, DTA) and Abbott electron microscopy. Our results confirm the formation of a hybrid nanocomposite containing modified titanium dioxide nanoparticles and the organic pigment phthalocyanine with pure anatase phase. TEM micrograph showed a particle size of hybrid nanocomposite of about 20 nm. The band gap of the resulting hybrid nanocomposite was 2.80 eV, which was significantly reduced compared to the pure titanium dioxide (3.17 eV). As a result, the synthesized hybrid nanocomposite is very suitable for photocatalytic, photovoltaic and super hydrophilic applications under sunlight due to its absorption edge in the visible region.