Journal article
Characterisation of oxygen defects and nitrogen impurities in TiO2 photocatalysts using variable-temperature X-ray powder diffraction
- Abstract:
- TiO2-based powder materials have been widely studied as efficient photocatalysts for water splitting due to their low cost, photo-responsivity, earthly abundance, chemical and thermal stability, etc. In particular, the recent breakthrough of nitrogen-doped TiO2, which enhances the presence of structural defects and dopant impurities at elevated temperatures, exhibits an impressive visible-light absorption for photocatalytic activity. Although their electronic and optical properties have been extensively studied, the structure-activity relationship and photocatalytic mechanism remain ambiguous. Herein, we report an in-depth structural study of rutile, anatase and mixed phases (commercial P25) with and without nitrogen-doping by variable-temperature synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction. We report that an unusual anisotropic thermal expansion of the anatase phase can reveal the intimate relationship between sub-surface oxygen vacancies, nitrogen-doping level and photocatalytic activity. For highly doped anatase, a new cubic titanium oxynitride phase is also identified which provides important information on the fundamental shift in absorption wavelength, leading to excellent photocatalysis using visible light.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-021-20977-z
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 661
- Publication date:
- 2021-01-28
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-01-05
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Pmid:
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33510151
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1159323
- Local pid:
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pubs:1159323
- Deposit date:
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2021-04-02
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- C Foo et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access: 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 license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license 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 license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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