Surface modified Ti-based hydroperoxo complex for photocatalytic oxidation of volatile organic compounds under visible-light

Abstract

Recently, as environmental issues have been discussed globally, the value of eco-friendly pollutant reduction technologies is gradually increasing. The most problematic pollutants are volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the main cause of global warming, which is very harmful to humans as well as the environment. There are many ways to remove VOCs but the photocatalytic oxidation have been many studied because it shows a very environmentally friendly aspect of producing water and carbon dioxide as a final by-product and it has the advantage that they can be activated even with only solar energy. The most important factor in photocatalytic oxidation is the electron as the major carrier, and we have studied a design for the synthesis of the most suitable photocatalytst. In this paper, we have successfully synthesized Ti-based hydroperoxo complex (THPC) by facile sol-gel synthesis method at room-temperature. As a metallic precursor, TiH2 was used because it has much more active sites than conventional TiO2, which can makes many hydroperoxo groups and controlling oxygen vacancy originated from Ti3+ during the process. As the time to oxidize the surface during the process increases, the hydroperoxo groups of the surface were increased, and it was confirmed by various optical measurements such as XPS, Raman and FT-IR. Finally, photocatalytic oxidation test of acetaldehyde as VOCs, was evaluated under visible-light irradiation.