Effect of different type of organic compounds (humic acid, oxalate, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, nitrilotriacetic acid, phenol) on the photocatalytic removal of cyanide with TiO2 or ZnO was studied in this work with variation of the solution pH, contact time, initial cyanide concentration and type of organic compounds. Photocatalytic oxidation efficiency of cyanide with TiO2 was greatly aff...

ZnO layers with a wide range of surface roughness and morphologies can be deposited by low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LP-CVD). In this paper, we investigate the effect of a low-resistivity TiO2-ZnO bi-layer incorporated as an anti-reflection coating between the rough ZnO front transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and the silicon layer, for thin film p-i-n microcrystalline silicon solar c...

We predict by first-principles methods a phase transition in TiO2 at 6.5 Mbar from the Fe2P-type polymorph to a ten-coordinated structure with space group I4/mmm. This is the first report, to our knowledge, of the pressure-induced phase transition to the I4/mmm structure among all dioxide compounds. The I4/mmm structure was found to be up to 3.3% denser across all pressures investigated. Signif...

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) displays photocatalytic behavior under near-ultraviolet (UV) illumination. In another scientific field, it is well understood that the excitation of localized plasmon polaritons on the surface of silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) causes a tremendous increase of the near-field amplitude at well-defined wavelengths in the near UV. The exact resonance wavelength depends on th...

We predict by first-principles methods a phase transition in TiO2 at 6.5 Mbar from the Fe2P-type polymorph to a ten-coordinated structure with space group I4/mmm. This is the first report of the pressure-induced phase transition to the I4/mmm structure amongst all dioxide compounds. The I4/mmm structure was found to be up to 3.3% denser across all pressures investigated. Significant differences...

CdSe quantum dots with a prominent band-edge photoluminescence were obtained by a soft AOT water-in-oil (w/o) microemulsion templating method with an estimated size of 2.7 nm. The CdSe particles were covered with a TiO2 layer using an intermediate SiO2 coupling reagent by a sol-gel process. The resulting CdSe/TiO2 core/shell nanoparticles showed appreciable photocatalytic activity at λ = 405 nm...

ZnO/SiO2 was prepared using sol-gel method, and vanadium particles were loaded on this nano-photocatalyst by wet incipient method. They characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive (EDX) analysis andFouriertransform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The XRD patterns showed that the zinc oxide samples have a wurtzite structure and vanadium dope...

In the present study treatability of persistent organic compounds from the flow back water after hydrauling fracturing was investigated. The combination of TiO2 photocatalyst and magnetic oxide nanoparticles enhance the separation and recoverable property of nanosized TiO2 photocatalyst. Fe3O4/TiO2 and Fe3O4@SiO2/TiO2 nanocomposites were prepared by heteroagglomeration. The photocatalysts' char...

There is evidence from isolated (in vitro) cell experiments that ZnO and TiO2 may induce free radical formation in the presence of light and this free-radical generation may cause cell damage (photo-genotoxicity with ZnO). However, recent work suggests that the photogenotoxicity seen in these studies (with ZnO) may be due to an UV-induced experimental artifact in an in vitro assay, rather than ...

In this contribution we have studied the dynamics of light harvesting of ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) to a surface adsorbed sensitizing dye (SD) N719. By using the picosecond resolved Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) technique we have explored that the excited ZnO NPs resonantly transfer visible optical radiation to the SD N719. The consequence of the energy transfer on the performance of th...