Preparation and Photocatalytic CO Oxidation Performance Study of Au/Oxygen-Deficient (Anatase/B-Phase) TiO<sub>2</sub> Heterojunction Microspheres

oleh: Ze Hong, Jingying Ouyang, Jiaxin Li, Han Zheng, Ying Liu

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2023-07-01

Deskripsi

Multi-heterojunctions are more promising than single heterojunctions in photocatalysis due to the availability of more interfaces between each component. However, photocatalytic activity is highly dependent on the contact mode of individual components. In this work, we assembled gold nanoparticles/oxygen-deficient (anatase/B-phase) TiO<sub>2</sub> multi-heterojunction microspheres using spray pyrolysis and focused on their contact mode-governed photocatalytic activity. The results reveal that using oxygen-deficient (anatase/B-phase) TiO<sub>2</sub> microspheres as building blocks could significantly enhance the absorption of visible light and the photocatalytic activity of a gold–TiO<sub>2</sub> system toward the photocatalytic carbon monoxide oxidation. Furthermore, loading gold nanoparticles onto B-phase TiO<sub>2</sub> could facilitate a more prominent enhancement of activity than that of pure B-phase TiO<sub>2</sub>, benefiting from the two-electron reduction of oxygen at the interface of TiO<sub>2</sub>/Au. Meanwhile, the high crystallinity of B-phase TiO<sub>2</sub> microspheres allows for a gold loading amount of 1 wt% in the gold/(anatase/B-phase) TiO<sub>2</sub> system, which is 1.67 times more active than pure B-phase TiO<sub>2</sub> microspheres, in the photocatalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide to generate carbon dioxide.