Preparation of hydrogen, fluorine and chlorine doped and co-doped titanium dioxide photocatalysts: a theoretical and experimental approach
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Published version
Author(s)
Filippatos, Petros-Panagis
Soultati, Anastasia
Kelaidis, Nikolas
Petaroudis, Christos
Alivisatou, Anastasia-Antonia
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has a strong photocatalytic activity in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum combined with excellent chemical stability and abundance. However, its photocatalytic efficiency is prohibited by limited absorption within the visible range derived from its wide band gap value and the presence of charge trapping states located at the band edges, which act as electron-hole recombination centers. Herein, we modify the band gap and improve the optical properties of TiO2via co-doping with hydrogen and halogen. The present density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate that hydrogen is incorporated in interstitial sites while fluorine and chlorine can be inserted both as interstitial and oxygen substitutional defects. To investigate the synergy of dopants in TiO2 experimental characterization techniques such as Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray and ultra-violet photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS/UPS), UV-Vis absorption and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) measurements, have been conducted. The observations suggest that the oxide’s band gap is reduced upon halogen doping, particularly for chlorine, making this material promising for energy harvesting devices. The studies on hydrogen production ability of these materials support the enhanced hydrogen production rates for chlorine doped (Cl:TiO2) and hydrogenated (H:TiO2) oxides compared to the pristine TiO2 reference.
Date Issued
2021-03-11
Date Acceptance
2021-01-01
Citation
Scientific Reports, 2021, 11
ISSN
2045-2322
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Journal / Book Title
Scientific Reports
Volume
11
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 5700