Abstract
Titanium oxide is widely applied as a photocatalyst. However, its low efficiency and narrow light absorption range are two main disadvantages that severely impede its practical application. In this work, black TiOx films with different chemical compositions were fabricated by tuning target voltage and controlling O2 flow during reactive DC magnetron sputtering. The optimized TiOx films with mixed phases (TiO, Ti2O3, Ti3O5, and TiO2) exhibited fantastic photothermal and photocatalytic activity by combining high light-absorptive Ti2O3 and Ti3O5 phases with the photocatalytic TiO2 phase. The sample prepared with oxygen flow at 5.6 ± 0.2 sccm and target voltage near 400 V exhibited excellent optical absorbance of 89.29% under visible light, which could improve surface temperature to 114 °C under sunlight. This film could degrade Rhodamine-B up to 74% after 150 min of UV irradiation. In a word, this work provides a guideline for fabricating black TiOx films with photothermal-assisted photocatalytic activity by reactive DC magnetron sputtering, which could avoid the usage of hydrogen and is convenient for quantity preparation.
Highlights
TiO2 is a commercial photocatalyst that has been widely applied in antibacterial disinfection, water treatment, and air purification due to its nontoxic, harmless, and chemistry-stable features [1]
The black TiOx films in our work presented better photocatalytic activity than the TiO2 films without doping [20,21], even better than the film combined with ZnO [33]
Black TiOx films with high photothermal and photocatalytic activities were successfully fabricated by regulating the oxygen flow and target voltage in the reactive DC magnetron sputtering process
Summary
TiO2 is a commercial photocatalyst that has been widely applied in antibacterial disinfection, water treatment, and air purification due to its nontoxic, harmless, and chemistry-stable features [1]. Its wide bandgap hinders its optical absorption range to ultraviolet light, which occupies less than 5% of the whole solar energy [2]. In 2011, Chen et al [3] reported a novel kind of “black TiOx” nanoparticles with an optical absorption starting from 1.0 eV (~1200 nm) by a hydrogenated method, which made significant improvements in visible-light photocatalytic activity on water splitting and dye degradation. The photothermal-assisted photocatalyst system with a light absorber/semiconductor composite (LASC) has been demonstrated beneficial for the photocatalytic reaction [7,8,9]. LASC systems composed of black TiOx with high absorbance might bring substantial photothermal conversion efficiency for photocatalytic application
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