Comparison of Fe₂TiO₅/C photocatalysts synthesized via a nonhydrolytic sol–gel method and solid-state reaction method

Abstract

Two different methods were used to prepare Fe2TiO5/C photocatalysts, demonstrating the superiorities of in situ carbon introduced by a NHSG method.

Titanium Source Choice Affects the Nonhydrolytic Sol‐Gel Synthesis and Morphology of Fe2TiO5

“…Fe(OC 2 H 5 ) 3 reacts with Ti(OC 4 H 9 ) 4 to form heterogeneous polycondensation intermediate, and it directly transforms to amorphous Fe 2 TiO 5 at 300 °C. Then the amorphous Fe 2 TiO 5 crystallizes at 600 °C, which is lower than that of prepared by solid reaction method [2,6,9] and sol‐gel method [10] . This synthesized temperature is somewhat higher than that of hydrothermal method, but it does not need high pressure environment.…”

“…Up to now, many researchers, such as Debecker, Mutin, Pinkas, including our group, are devoted to NHSG synthesis of different materials [10–15] . However, there is no report about the preparation of Fe 2 TiO 5 powders by NHSG method except from our team [1–2] . In this work, Fe 2 TiO 5 is synthesized by NHSG method and the effects of titanium sources on the synthesis and the morphology of Fe 2 TiO 5 are systematically studied.…”

“…Fe 2 TiO 5 has the properties of excellent photochemical stability, narrow band gap (2.2 eV), strong visible light absorption and wide range (390∼750 nm), moderate energy band potential and high ferromagnetic response [1,2] . These excellent characteristics can help to solve the problems of low solar energy absorption of TiO 2 and difficult recovery of traditional photocatalytic powder materials [3,4] .…”

Prospects of Using Pseudobrookite as an Iron-Bearing Mineral for the Alkaline Electrolytic Production of Iron

“…Natural iron-titanium oxides, such as pseudobrookite (Fe 2 TiO 5 ), are an interesting raw material with a substantially higher Ti content (~33 wt.% of TiO 2 ). Fe 2 TiO 5 is the most stable iron-titanate phase with an n-type semiconductor behaviour, showing suitable properties to be used as a catalyst in biomass gasification [22] due to its compositional flexibility and redox changes, and its capacity to absorb in the visible light spectrum allows it to be used as a photocatalyst [23,24]. It is also used as an electrocatalyst by designing from it defects-rich heterostructures [25] and as a gas sensor [26], since it is a metal oxide semiconductor material or ceramic pigments [27] due to its presence in glassy coatings and glazes after firing at high temperatures.…”

“…It is also used as an electrocatalyst by designing from it defects-rich heterostructures [25] and as a gas sensor [26], since it is a metal oxide semiconductor material or ceramic pigments [27] due to its presence in glassy coatings and glazes after firing at high temperatures. Synthesis of phase-pure Fe 2 TiO 5 can be performed mainly by solid-state reaction [23,28,29], hydrothermal synthesis [28] and sol-gel [23,24], among others, while the design of highly porous Fe 2 TiO 5 ceramics seems to be lacking in the literature. The present work explores, for the first time, the use of an iron-bearing mineral such as pseudobrookite as a raw material for iron production and aims to study the impact of higher titanium content on the electroreduction mechanism.…”