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Introducing oxygen vacancies in TiO2 lattice through trivalent iron to enhance the photocatalytic removal of indoor NO

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Abstract

The synthesis of oxygen vacancies (OVs)-modified TiO2 under mild conditions is attractive. In this work, OVs were easily introduced in TiO2 lattice during the hydrothermal do** process of trivalent iron ions. Theoretical calculations based on a novel charge-compensation structure model were employed with experimental methods to reveal the intrinsic photocatalytic mechanism of Fe-doped TiO2 (Fe–TiO2). The OVs formation energy in Fe–TiO2 (1.12 eV) was only 23.6% of that in TiO2 (4.74 eV), explaining why Fe3+ do** could introduce OVs in the TiO2 lattice. The calculation results also indicated that impurity states introduced by Fe3+ and OVs enhanced the light absorption activity of TiO2. Additionally, charge carrier transport was investigated through the carrier lifetime and relative mass. The carrier lifetime of Fe–TiO2 (4.00, 4.10, and 3.34 ns for 1at%, 2at%, and 3at% do** contents, respectively) was longer than that of undoped TiO2 (3.22 ns), indicating that Fe3+ and OVs could promote charge carrier separation, which can be attributed to the larger relative effective mass of electrons and holes. Herein, Fe–TiO2 has higher photocatalytic indoor NO removal activity compared with other photocatalysts because it has strong light absorption activity and high carrier separation efficiency.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the BJAST High-level Innovation Team Program (No. BGS202001), the Bei**g Postdoctoral Research Foundation (No. 2022-ZZ-046), the National Natural and Science Foundation of China (No. 51972026), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for the Scientific Research (KAKENHI, Nos. 16H06439 and 20H00297), and the Dynamic Alliance for Open Innovations Bridging Human, Environment and Materials, the Cooperative Research Program of “Network Joint Research Center for Materials and Devices.” Peng Sun is grateful for the scholarship granted to a visiting Ph.D. student of the Inter-University Exchange Project by the China Scholarship Council (CSC, No. 201906460113).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Urban Safety and Environmental Science, Bei**g Academy of Science and Technology, Bei**g, 100054, China

    Peng Sun, **hua Liu, **g**g Zhang & Zhanwu Ning

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Bei**g, Bei**g, 100083, China

    Peng Sun, Sumei Han, Shuo Yang, Faguo Wang & Wenbin Cao

  3. Bei**g Wetech Environmental Sci-Tech Co., Ltd., Bei**g, 100083, China

    Wenxiu Liu

  4. Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials (IMRAM), Tohoku University, Katahira 2-1-1, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan

    Shu Yin

  5. Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, Katahira 2-1-1, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan

    Shu Yin

  6. Tian** College, University of Science and Technology Bei**g, Tian**, 301830, China

    Wenbin Cao

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  1. Peng Sun
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Sun, P., Han, S., Liu, J. et al. Introducing oxygen vacancies in TiO2 lattice through trivalent iron to enhance the photocatalytic removal of indoor NO. Int J Miner Metall Mater 30, 2025–2035 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-023-2611-z

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