Nitrogen-doped TiO2 from TiN and its visible light photoelectrochemical properties

Homogeneous titanium nitride (TiN) thin film was produced by simple electrophoreic deposition process on Ti substrate in an aqueous suspension of nanosized TiN powder. Nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide (TiO2−xNx) was synthesized by oxidative annealing the resulted TiN thin film in air. Photoelectrochemical measurements demonstrated visible light photoresponse for the electrode of annealed electrophoreic deposited TiN samples. It is found that the synthesized TiO2−xNx electrode showed higher photo potential under white and visible light illumination than the pure TiO2 electrode. The photocurrent under visible light illumination was also observed, which increased with the increase of deposition time of TiN thin films.