Titanium dioxide, is a cheap, nontoxic, and highly efficient photocatalyst that has been extensively studied for degradation of organic pollutants in water. However, because of the wide band gap energy of titanium dioxide, only a small UV fraction of solar light (3-5%) can be utilized. Therefore, it is of great interest to find ways to extend the absorption wavelength range of titanium dioxide to the visible region without decreasing the photocatalytic activity. Theory suggests that anion doping of titanium dioxide has considerable effects on the band gap alteration (1, 2). A significant progress was made in this area by Liu and co-workers (3), who reported the synthesis of visible light responsive nitrogen doped micro-sized anatase titanium dioxide powders. In this study, in order to utilize visible light in photocatalytic reactions, nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide films were prepared hydrothermally using TiN as the titanium and nitrogen source and gold-coated silicon wafers and sapphire as substrates. The resulting anatase films are polycrystalline, continuous, and evenly coat the substrate to a thickness of approximately 800 nm. Our study shows that N-doped titanium dioxide films narrow the band gap of titania and show a significant shift of the absorption edge to a lower energy in the visible region.  Therefore, nitrogen doping has important effects on the photocatalytic activity using visible light.  This work used grazing angle XRD, SEM, UV-Vis, and XPS to characterize the films produced as a function of reagent concentration and time. The results of preliminary photooxidation experiments will be reported.1-       Umebayshi, T. Yamaki, T. Yanamoto, S. Miyashita, A. Tanaka, S. Sumita, T. J. Appl. Phys. 2003 , 93, 5156.2-       Ashai, R. Morikawa, T. Ohwaki, T. Aoki, K. Taga, Y. Science, 2001 , 293, 269.3-        G. Liu, H. G. Yang, X. Wang, L. Cheng, J. Pan, G. Q. Lu and H. M. Cheng, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2009 , 131, 12868

Visible light absorption by nitrogen-doped titanium dioxide films with {001} facets for photocatalysis

248th National Meeting (2014)

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