Structure, luminescence properties and photocatalytic activity of europium doped-TiO2 nanoparticles.

This article reports that as a promising photocatalyst, semiconductor TiO₂ is the focus of numerous studies owing to its attractive characteristics in the treatment of environmental contaminants over the past 20 years. Unfortunately, its bad photocatalytic activity due to the fast recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs limits the commercialization of this technology. In recent years, in order to enhance the photocatalytic activity, modification of TiO₂ by rare-earth-element has become of an increasing interest because of their special photoluminescence and catalytic properties. In this paper, europium (Eu) is selected as a representative of rare earth elements to study the effects of Eu ion doping on the structure, luminescence properties, and photocatalytic activity of TiO₂.