Abstract
Iron-doped titanium dioxide nanoparticles, with Fe/Ti atomic ratios from 0% to 10%, were synthesized by flame spray pyrolysis (FSP), employing a single-step method. Ferrocene, being nontoxic and readily soluble in liquid hydrocarbons, was used as the iron source, while titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) was used as the precursor for TiO2. The general particle characterization and phase description were examined using ICP-OES, XRD, BET, and Raman spectroscopy, whereas the XPS technique was used to study the surface chemistry of the synthesized particles. For particle morphology, HRTEM with EELS and EDS analyses were used. Optical and magnetic properties were examined using UV–vis and SQUID, respectively. Iron doping to TiO2 nanoparticles promoted rutile phase formation, which was minor in the pure TiO2 particles. Iron-doped nanoparticles exhibited a uniform iron distribution within the particles. XPS and UV–vis results revealed that Fe2+ was dominant for lower iron content and Fe3+ was common for higher iron content and the iron-containing particles had a contracted band gap of ~1 eV lower than pure TiO2 particles with higher visible light absorption. SQUID results showed that doping TiO2 with Fe changed the material to be paramagnetic. The generated nanoparticles showed a catalytic effect for dye-degradation under visible light.
Highlights
Flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) has emerged as a cost-effective method for large-scale synthesis of nanoparticles [1] and a number of large-scale pilot projects based on FSP have been recently demonstrated [2]
To estimate the accurate amount of iron doped in TiO2 samples, inductively-coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) was implemented (Table 1)
Direct proportionality was noticed between amounts of ferrocene added to the iron content found in each Fe-TiO2 sample
Summary
Flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) has emerged as a cost-effective method for large-scale synthesis of nanoparticles [1] and a number of large-scale pilot projects based on FSP have been recently demonstrated [2]. Doping TiO2 nanoparticles with transition metals, such as Fe and Co, can result in better photocatalytic conversions due to a reduction in the band-gap and the recombination rate of the electron hole pair [7,8,9] Such transition metals can be used to produce TiO2 nanoparticles with dilute magnetic semiconductor properties [10] that are important for spintronics applications. Teoh et al [15] utilized a flame spray pyrolysis method in generating iron-doped titania. They used titanium tetraisopropoxide as the titanium precursor and iron naphthenate as the iron precursor. The doped-particles were used as a photocatalyst for dye-degradation experiments under visible light
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