Back to Search
Start Over
Modification mechanism of praseodymium doping for the photocatalytic performance of TiO2: a combined experimental and theoretical study
- Source :
- Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. 17:19087-19095
- Publication Year :
- 2015
- Publisher :
- Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), 2015.
-
Abstract
- Impurity doping is a simple and efficient modification method to improve the photocatalytic performance of wide band gap photocatalysts. However, some basic and important issues about the mechanism of impurity doping modification still need to be further confirmed and explained. In the present work, Pr-doped TiO2 with a mono-phase crystal structure was prepared by a sol-gel method. Then, the crystal structure, binding information, optical absorption, and photocatalytic activity were systematically investigated. The experimental results show that Pr doping could significantly enhance the photocatalytic activity of TiO2, and the effects of modification on rutile TiO2 are more obvious than for anatase TiO2. In order to understand the underlying mechanism, density functional theory was utilized to calculate the crystal structure and electronic structure of pure and Pr-doped TiO2. The differences in electronic structure between anatase and rutile phases lead to the above photocatalytic performance. The experimental measurements and theoretical calculations mutually support each other in the present work. Two points are confirmed: the position of the band edge determines the redox activity of the photocatalyst, and the shallow energy bands induced by impurity doping could improve the photocatalytic performance.
- Subjects :
- Anatase
Materials science
Doping
Wide-bandgap semiconductor
General Physics and Astronomy
Nanotechnology
Crystal structure
Electronic structure
Condensed Matter::Materials Science
Chemical physics
Rutile
Condensed Matter::Superconductivity
Photocatalysis
Condensed Matter::Strongly Correlated Electrons
Density functional theory
Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14639084 and 14639076
- Volume :
- 17
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....7680ea449b1cc0649bd835317dd7eaa2