Fabrication and characterization of brookite-rich, visible light-active TiO2 films for water splitting

Hui Pan, Xiaofeng Qiu, Ilia N. Ivanov, Harry M. Meyer, Wei Wang, Wenguang Zhu, M. Parans Paranthaman, Zhenyu Zhang, Gyula Eres, Baohua Gu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

53 Scopus citations

Abstract

We report that mild oxidation of Ti foils in air results in brookite-rich titanium oxide (TiO2) films with similar spectral response to that of dye-sensitized TiO2. X-ray powder diffraction and Raman spectroscopy show that the onset of brookite formation occurs at 500 °C, and the material is characterized by a strong absorption band in the visible spectral range. The first-principle calculations show that enhanced visible light absorption correlates with the presence of Ti interstitials. Photocurrent density measurements of water splitting reveal that the brookite-rich TiO2 exhibits the highest photocatalytic performance among the different forms of TiO2 produced by oxidation of Ti foils. With increasing oxidation temperature transformation to the rutile phase accompanied by declining visible range photoactivity is observed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)90-95
Number of pages6
JournalApplied Catalysis B: Environmental
Volume93
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 25 2009

Funding

This work was sponsored in part by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle LLC for DOE under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. The DFT calculations were performed at Computational Center of Science (CCS) of ORNL.

FundersFunder number
Office of Basic Energy Sciences
UT-Battelle LLC
U.S. Department of Energy
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering

    Keywords

    • Bandgap
    • Brookite
    • Catalysis
    • Photoenergy
    • TiO
    • Water splitting

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