Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
57320 Catalysis Today 2009 6 Pages PDF
Abstract

Nanopowders of TiO2:N were synthesized in a two step process. At first, TiO2 was prepared from titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) in form of crystalline powder by flame spray synthesis (FSS). In a second step TiO2-FSS with a specific surface area (SSA) of 54 m2/g and TiO2-P25 as a reference material were ammonolysed in a rotating tube furnace. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to investigate crystallinity before and after ammonolysis. Based on the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies it has been established that the N 1s peak at 395.9 eV can be assigned to substitutional nitrogen. New electron transitions and resulting band gap changes in respect to undoped sample have been observed in TiO2−xNx. Diffusive reflectance and the resulted band gap energy were determined by diffuse reflection spectroscopy (DRS), where the correlation between differential reflectance and Tauc plot, known as a second method of the band gap determination, is discussed for pure and N-doped TiO2 nanopowders. The photocatalytic performance of the nanopowders under visible light irradiation (400–500 nm) was studied by the degradation of methylene blue (MB) in aqueous suspensions.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Chemical Engineering Catalysis
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