Roles of Vanadium and Nitrogen in Photocatalytic Activity of VN-Codoped TiO₂ Photocatalyst.

Varma, Ranjana ORCID: 0000-0002-5131-7417, Yadav, Manisha, Tiwari, Kajal, Makani, Nisha ORCID: 0000-0002-2293-3122, Gupta, Suraj ORCID: 0000-0001-8128-5869, Kothari, Dushyant C, Miotello, Antonio ORCID: 0000-0002-6895-616X and Patel, Nainesh ORCID: 0000-0003-3363-5136 (2018) Roles of Vanadium and Nitrogen in Photocatalytic Activity of VN-Codoped TiO₂ Photocatalyst. Photochemistry and photobiology, 94 (5). pp. 955-964.

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Abstract

In the present manuscript, we explore the VN-codoped TiO₂ system intended to understand the role played by each dopant in synergistic enhancement in performance of TiO₂ photocatalyst. The photocatalytic decomposition of organic pollutants in aqueous solution under visible light was used as a probe reaction to evaluate the performance of VN-codoped TiO₂ samples with different V and N concentrations. An optical measurement of VN-codoped TiO₂ shows considerable improved visible light absorption with increase in V-concentration as compared to increase in N concentration, which was due to the effective narrowing of the band gap by V-doping. The energy levels formed by N-dopants act as the trapping centers for photogenerated holes to suppress recombination process as indicated by PL and TRPL results. It is also observed that at high V-concentrations recombination centers are created in the form of oxygen vacancies as indicated by XPS and PL. In VN-codoped TiO₂ , addition of N partially fills these oxygen vacancies to reduce the number of recombination centers and prolong the lifetime of charge carriers. Thus, V improves the visible light absorption while N reduces the recombination of electron-hole pairs, thus creating the synergistic effect to produce three times better performance than pure TiO₂ .

Item Type:	Article
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	17 Jun 2019 07:32
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2024 04:06
DOI:	10.1111/php.12942
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3026810