Preparation Of Highly Reactive Anatase Titanium Dioxide And Its Application In Photocatalytic Hydrogen Generation

In contrast with many kinds of semiconductors employed for photocatalysis, titanium dioxide (TiO2) has always been the core position of photocatalysis research and exhibits most promising future for application due to characteristics including nontoxicity, high reactivity, inexpensiveness, ultraviolet resistance, acid resistance, alkali resistance and strong oxidizer resistance.Nowadays human beings face energy crisis and environmental problems. As a part of hydrogen economy, undoubtedly hydrogen generation from water splitting is significant. It is essential to combine photocatalysis research with current energy and environmental problems. Anatase TiO2 has been proved to be more reactive in photocatalysis and catalysis. By different methods, anatase TiO2 with different morphologies has been synthesized successfully and its photocatalytic properties have been improved. The development of theoretic prediction provides solid support for synthesis of anatase TiO2.In this work, two sections will be presented. First, homogeneous liquid phase epitaxial growth of anatase TiO2 crystals was realized by a facile hydrothermal process. And the morphologies of the crystallites on {001} and {101} facets show obvious difference. The phenomenon is resulted from different surface atomic structure. Second,{001} and {100} facets dominated anatase TiO2 was synthesized via a facile hydrothermal route. Compared with anatase TiO2 with {101} and {001} facets, the as-obtained anatase TiO2 showed superior efficiency for hydrogen generation and held a relatively high efficiency after irradiation for 19 h under ultraviolet light. Third, single crystalline TiOF2 was prepared through one-pot hydrothermal method, and phase transition from TiOF2 to TiO2 was studied. The experimental results indicated that TiOF2 didn't show any hydrogen generation capability. The three samples of TiO2 displayed successively increasing H2 production efficiency after calcination under moist argon, pure argon, and pure H2S and interestingly, the sample treated under pure argon atmosphere exhibited hollow structure.