Effect of magnetic field on improvement of photocatalytic performance of V2O5/TiO2 nanoheterostructure films prepared by sparking method

Abstract

Our porous V2O5/TiO2 nanoheterostructure films (with a Ti/V atomic ratio of 1:1) were fabricated via a single-step sparking method using a strong magnetic field (0.5 T) without annealing requirement for the first time. We found that the magnetic flux arrangement has effect on film crystallization, unique morphology, large specific surface area, and surprisingly controllable phase structure of the films. An amorphous TV film was transformed to the TiO2 (anatase/rutile) phase (for TVN) and V2O5–VO2 mixed-phase (for TVH) without destroying the mesopores from an annealing process. Moreover, the TVH sample able to improve the degradation rate up to 270% compared with pre-annealed TV films and up to 30% with post-annealed (400 °C) TVA films. In this paper, the influence of magnetic flux arrangement on structural, morphological, optical, and photocatalytic properties of prepared sample have been investigated and reported.

Magnetic Field Effect on Photocatalytic Dye Degradation: A Review

“…[25,26] Apart from these tuning of photocatalysts, the photocatalytic performance can be enhanced by introducing external fields to the photocatalytic reaction system, because it does not require changing of components or geometries of photocatalysts which avoids complicated preparation processes. [27] There are several external fields like microwaves, [28] temperature gradient, [29] electric, [30] magnetic, [31,32] and coupling fields [33] have been successfully wielded on some photocatalytic systems. The separation of photo-induced electrons and holes can be accomplished by electric field, mechanical stress, and temperature fluctuation.…”