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Energy band regulation and heterophase surface heterojunction in B-C-N-TiO2 catalysts for enhanced photocatalytic activity

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Abstract

B-C-N-TiO2 catalysts with intermediate band gap and heterojunction were prepared by sol–gel method. The crystal structure, elemental composition, and absorbance performance were analyzed by XRD, XPS and UV–vis DRS. Due to the formation of the continuous intermediate band gap in the forbidden band, the optical absorption boundary of B-C-N-TiO2 catalyst extends to 412 nm, which shows different red shift compared with that of TiO2 (397 nm), N-TiO2 (400 nm), B-TiO2 (402 nm) and C-TiO2 (403 nm).Meanwhile, the B-C-N-TiO2 catalyst is a uniform spherical solid particle with exposed (101) and (211) planes. The degradation efficiency of B-C-N-TiO2 catalyst to methylene blue(MB) was up to 97.82% after 3 h under visible light, which shows different degree of improvement compared with that of TiO2 (34.8%), N-TiO2 (79.09%), B-TiO2 (87.82%) and C-TiO2 (73.19%). B-C-N-TiO2 has good stability, and there was still more than 95% degradation efficiency after three degradation cycles. It is also revealed that the incorporation of B-C-N element affects the crystal phase of the catalyst and promotes the generation of heterophase surface heterojunction between (101) and (211). It has certain guiding value for co-do** modification of three elements.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21276132) and the Key Research and Development Program in Shandong Province(public welfare science and technology research project) (2019GSF109038).

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  1. State Key Laboratory Base of Eco-Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, Shandong, China

    Jihai Duan, Peng Pan, Kang Xue, Hui Zhao, Zisheng Zhang & Weiwen Wang

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  1. Jihai Duan
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Duan, J., Pan, P., Xue, K. et al. Energy band regulation and heterophase surface heterojunction in B-C-N-TiO2 catalysts for enhanced photocatalytic activity. Appl Nanosci 10, 4415–4426 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-020-01493-w

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