Bimetallic Cu-Ni/TiO2 photocatalysts were synthesized using wet impregnation (WI) method with TiO2 (Degussa-P25) as support and calcined at different temperatures (180, 200, and 300°C) for the photodegradation of DIPA under visible light. The photocatalysts were characterized using TGA, FESEM, UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and temperatur...

Heterostructured photocatalysts were prepared to have nanostructured (ns) TiO2 shells surrounding microcrystalline (mc) cores of (Ba,Sr)TiO3. The as-prepared heterostructures were annealed between 400°C and 600°C to improve crystallinity and core-shell interfacial bonding. X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and gas adsorption measurements demonstrated that 50 nm thick shells composed of na...

For TiO2 photocatalysts, recombination of photoexcited electrons and holes would occur in crystalline defects such as oxygen vacancies, Ti ions, and surface states. Therefore, it is believed that the density of crystalline defects should be decreased to improve the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 particles. Contrary to this common knowledge, the introduction of crystalline defects by hydrogen r...

Photocatalysts are important for environmental cleanup of undesirable organic compounds and have potential applications for solar fuel generation either through water splitting or CO2 reduction [1]. It is now recognized that atomic level in-situ observations of catalytic materials are critical for understanding the structure-reactivity in catalysts. For photocatalysts, this requires that the sy...

At present, composite photocatalysts containing MoS2 as a co-catalyst and a subjective semiconductor material are usually obtained via various complex reduction methods using NH4MoS4 or Na2MoO4 as a precursor. In this work, a simple method was proposed to synthesize MoS2-TiO2 composite photocatalysts via mechanochemistry using MoS2 as a direct precursor. 4.0% MoS2-TiO2 after ball-milling at 300...

In situ solid-state NMR methodologies have been used to investigate the photocatalytic oxidation of ethanol (CH3CH2OH) over a series of SnO2-based photocatalysts. The adsorption of ethanol on commercially available SnO2 powder was studied using both cross-polarization 13C NMR and REDOR experiments, and showed the formation of two surface ethanol species, hydrogen-bonded ethanol at surface hydro...

Ti3+ species are highly unstable in air owing to their facile oxidation into Ti4+ species, and thus they cannot concentrate in the surface layer of TiO2 but are mainly present in its bulk. We report generation of abundant and stable Ti3+ species in the surface layer of TiO2 by boron doping for efficient utilization of solar irradiation. The resultant photocatalysts (denoted as B-TiO2-x) exhibit...

Photocatalysts show great potential in environmental remediation and water splitting using either artificial or natural light. Titanium dioxide (TiO2)-based photocatalysts are studied most frequently because they are stable, non-toxic, readily available, and highly efficient. However, the relatively wide band gap of TiO2 significantly limits its use under visible light or solar light. We herein...

Hybrid photocatalysts were prepared by depositing a macrocyclic cobalt complex on TiO2 surfaces. Upon UV light irradiation, photoexcited electrons in TiO2 nanoparticles were transferred to the surface cobalt catalyst for CO2 reduction.