Significant effect of lanthanide doping on the texture and properties of nanocrystalline mesoporous TiO2

Abstract

A systematic study of microstructure and photocatalytic properties of lanthanide doping of nanocrystalline mesoporous titanium dioxide is performed. The anatase-to-rutile (A-R) phase transformation of nanosized TiO2 was significantly inhibited by lanthanide doping and the inhibitory effect was enhanced with the increase of the rare earth radius, i.e., La3+>Gd3+>Yb3+ for different lanthanide dopants. At high calcination temperatures, different texture lanthanide titanium oxides of Ln4Ti9O24 (La3+, Pr3+, Nd3+), Ln2Ti2O7 (Eu3+, Gd3+, Tb3+, Dy3+, Er3+), and Yb2TiO5 were developed, respectively, revealing that the structures of lanthanide titanium oxide developed in Ln/TiO2 depend on the lanthanide radius. Larger radius lanthanides prefer to form higher coordination number lanthanide titanium oxide. In addition, the thermal stability of mesoporous structures of TiO2 was remarkable improved by lanthanide doping. The photocatalytic properties were studied by employing the photodegradation of Rhodamine B (RB) as a probe reaction. The results indicate that the lanthanide doping could bring about significant improvement to the photoreactivity of TiO2, and the improvement was sensitive to the atomic electronic configuration.