For the sustainable production of hydrogen by photocatalysis, the use of renewable resources such as water, organic compounds from plant biomass and earth abundant metal promoters is desired. We herein describe the previously not reported "one-pot" photoassisted synthesis of a binary metal-nitrogen promoted Cu(0)-N-TiO2 photocatalyst from a N-TiO2 precursor by photodeposition of copper directly...

In recent years, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) based on nanocrystalline mesoporous TiO2 films have attracted much attention as a potential low-cost alternative to single or polycrystalline p–n junction silicon solar cells. DSSCs can reach electrical energy conversion efficiencies ≈12% [154, 284]. The traditional mesoporous TiO2 electrode composed of the TiO2 nanoparticles offer insufficien...

Neodymium enriched TiO2 anatase-brookite powders were prepared by unconventional method via using pressurized hot fluids for TiO2 crystallization and purification. The photocatalysts were tested in the CH3OH photocatalytic decomposition and they were characterized with respect to the textural (nitrogen adsorption), structural (XRD, XPS, and Raman spectroscopies), chemical (XRF), and optical (DR...

The present work investigates the size dependent reflective properties of TiO2 nanoparticles and discusses the development of reflectors. The nanocrystalline TiO2 powders with different crystallinity and phase structures were obtained by controlling the reaction parameters. TiO2 nanoparticles synthesized via sol-gel method were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electr...

The effects of deoxycholic acid (DCA) and 4-tert-butylpyridine (TBP) as additives on the photovoltaic performance of coumarin-dye-sensitized nanocrystalline TiO2 solar cells were investigated. DCA coadsorption improved both the photocurrent and photovoltage of the solar cells, even though it decreased the amount of dye adsorbed on the TiO2 electrode. The improved photocurrent may arise from sup...

In Gratzel’s cell, the electrons injected by the photo-excitation of dye molecules, anchored to a mesoporous TiO2 film, efficiently diffuse to the back contact achieving solar energy conversion at efficiencies exceeding 10%. The mesoporous TiO2 surface constituted of randomly arranged nanocrystallites with a roughness factor of the order 1000 is heavily populated with traps, defects and adsorbe...

The electron diffusion and transport within the TiO2 network affect directly the device performance and, therefore, these phenomena have been studied over the past decades using different techniques and different charge transport models, such as Drude’s, and modified Drude’s models or effective medium theory. Here we employed optical pump THz probe spectroscopy (OPTP) to monitor the temporal ev...