Abstract
Nitrogen/sulfur co-doped anatase TiO2 nanocrystals with a high specific surface area and a high percentage of {001} facets were synthesized by a solvent-thermal process followed by the calcination with thiourea at an optimum heat treatment temperature. Under current experimental conditions, the optimum heat treatment temperature was found at 300°C, which successfully introduced nitrogen and sulfur dopants into the anatase lattice to replace a small portion of oxygen atoms while preserving the geometry of these anatase TiO2 nanocrystals to maintain a high percentage of {001} facets. These nitrogen/sulfur co-doped anatase TiO2 nanocrystals demonstrated a largely enhanced light absorption in the whole visible-light range and exhibited much higher photocatalytic performance than both P25 TiO2 nanoparticles and anatase TiO2 nanocrystals with a high percentage of {001} facets under visible-light illumination.
Highlights
The discovery of the photoelectrochemical splitting of water on TiO2 electrodes by Fujishima and Honda in 1972 started the fast development on semiconductorbased photocatalysts [1]
Exposed {001} facets were present in these as-prepared pure TiO2 nanocrystals
From transmission electron microscopy (TEM)/high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) observations and the symmetries of anatase TiO2 nanocrystals [3], the schematic geometry of the as-prepared pure TiO2 nanocrystals could be described as the insert of Figure 1b
Summary
The discovery of the photoelectrochemical splitting of water on TiO2 electrodes by Fujishima and Honda in 1972 started the fast development on semiconductorbased photocatalysts [1]. Anatase TiO2 single crystals with controlled facets attract a lot of research interests [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. Most reported anatase TiO2 single crystals with exposed {001} facets were in the micrometer size range [3,4,5,6,7,8], so their specific surface area values were quite small. In the report by Yang et al [4], the BET specific surface area of anatase TiO2 single crystals with 64% {001} facets was just 1.6 m2/g, a mere
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