Visible light active photocatalytic C-doped titanium dioxide films deposited via reactive pulsed DC magnetron co-sputtering: Properties and photocatalytic activity

Abstract

Doping of TiO2 with carbon is known to be an efficient method of enhancing visible light photocatalytic activity. The present work describes the deposition of carbon-doped titania coatings deposited by reactive magnetron co-sputtering of Ti and C targets. Undoped titania coatings were produced under similar deposition conditions for comparison purposes. Following deposition, all coatings were annealed in air at 873K for 30 min to develop the required crystalline structure; and then analysed with EDS, XRD, AFM, XPS and UV-visible spectrophotometry. A number of tests, including methylene blue and stearic acid decomposition tests, and photo-induced hydrophilicity measurements, were employed for the assessment of the photocatalytic properties of the C-doped and un-doped titanium dioxide coatings under UV and visible light irradiation. It was found that carbon-doped titania coatings significantly outperformed undoped titania when using both visible and UV irradiation. Similar trends were observed for other properties. While excessive carbon doping has been shown to have a negative effect on the photocatalytic properties of the titanium dioxide, overall, carbon doping 2 via reactive co-sputtering has been confirmed as an efficient method of photocatalytic property enhancement. This is due to a narrowing of the bandgap and to extended lifetimes of the photogenerated charge carriers.

Effect of the Titanium Isopropoxide:Acetylacetone Molar Ratio on the Photocatalytic Activity of TiO2 Thin Films

“…According to many authors, carbon doping enhances photocatalytic activity under visible light [25,54,55,56,57,58,59]. Therefore, some of the films were tested for the ability to degrade the stearic acid layer under VIS light (Figure 7b).…”

Antibacterial and photocatalytic active transparent TiO2 crystallized CaO–BaO–B2O3–Al2O3–TiO2–ZnO glass nanocomposites

“…This photoinduced hydrophilicity is frequently used as an indicator of the self‐cleaning properties and photocatalytic efficiency of glass . The photoinduced hydrophilicity mainly originated from water adsorption on the photogenerated oxygen vacancies on the surface of photocatalyst . It means CBBATZ‐3 sample has a self‐cleaning property and also a promising photocatalytic too.…”

Micro-Patterning of Magnetron Sputtered Titanium Dioxide Coatings and Their Efficiency for Photocatalytic Applications

“…Following the dye degradation tests, the photocatalytic efficiency of patterned and non-patterned titania samples were further verified with a stearic acid degradation test. The detailed description of the test can be found elsewhere [39]. In brief, samples of the same geometrical size were spin-coated (Osilla spin-coater) with 0.5 mL of 0.1 M stearic acid solution at 1000 rpm speed for a total time of 30 s. Following the spin-coating process, the samples were dried in air at 70 • C for 15 min.…”