《A New Approach to the Preparation of Nitrogen-Doped Titania Visible Light Photocatalyst》.pdfVIP

Article pubs.acs.org/cm A New Approach to the Preparation of Nitrogen-Doped Titania Visible Light Photocatalyst Anna Kachina,† Eric Puzenat,† Samy Ould-Chikh,‡ Christophe Geantet,† Pierre Delichere,† and Pavel Afanasiev*,† †Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse et l’Environnement de Lyon IRCELYON, UMR 5256, CNRS, Universite Lyon 1, 2 av A,́ Einstein 69626 Villeurbanne Cedex, France ‡KAUST Catalysis Center (KCC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal (KSA) ABSTRACT: A new simple method is described, allowing introduction of nitrogen into the TiO2 lattice at low temperatures. The technique is based on the introduction of oxophilic molecules, such as CCl4, into the reaction mixture. The treatment of titanium dioxide powders by NH3−CCl4 mixtures leads to highly dispersed N-doped TiO . As compared to bare TiO or to the same oxide treated with sole NH , the 2 2 3 solids treated with NH3−CCl4 mixtures showed a stronger red shift in optical absorption and enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible light, as demonstrated for two reactions of formic acid oxidation and photocatalytic production of hydrogen from methanol. The nitridation temperature can be significantly decreased by introducing CCl4, because of a favorable change of the reaction thermodynamics. Not only can higher specific surface area of materials be obtained as a result of avoiding sintering but a higher amount of nitrogen is introduced in a positio