Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

arXiv, 2020

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2005.00533

American Chemical Society, ACS Applied Energy Materials, 12(2), p. 8399-8404, 2019

DOI: 10.1021/acsaem.9b02053

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Magnéli Phases Doped with Pt for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

Full text: Unavailable

Question mark in circle
Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

Defined substoichiometric titanium oxides (Ti$_x$O$_{2x-1}$ with $3 < x < 10$) called Magneli phases have been investigated mostly for their unusual high conductivity and metal-like behavior. In photocatalysis, Magneli phase containing titania particles have been reported to provide favorable charge separation resulting in enhanced reaction efficiency. In the current work we describe a one-step synthesis of Magneli-containing mixed phase nanoparticles that carry directly integrated minute amounts of Pt. Phase optimized nanoparticles that contain only a few hundred ppm Pt are very effective photocatalysts for H$_2$ evolution (they provide a 50-100 times higher H$_2$ evolution than plain anatase loaded with a similar amount of Pt). These photocatalysts are synthesized in a setup combining a hot-wall reactor that is used for TiOx synthesis with a spark generator producing Pt nanoparticles. Different reactor temperatures result in various phase ratios between anatase and Magneli phases. The titania nanoparticles (ca. 24 - 53 nm) were characterized using XRD, HRTEM, XPS and EPR spectra as well as ICP-OES analysis. The best photocatalyst prepared at 900$^∘$C (which consists of mixed phase particles of 32% anatase, 11% rutile and 57% Magneli phases loaded with 290 ppm of Pt) can provide a photocatalytic H$_2$ evolution rate of ca. 5432 micromol h$^{-1} g$^{-1}$ for UV and ca. 1670 micromol h$^{-1} g$^{-1}$ for AM1.5 illumination. For powders converted to higher amounts of Magneli phases (1000$^∘$C and 1100$^∘$C), a drastic loss of the photocatalytic H$_2$ generation activity is observed. Thus, the high photocatalytic efficiency under best conditions is ascribed to an effective synergy between multi-junctions of Magneli titania and Pt that enable a much more effective charge separation and reaction than conventional Pt/anatase junctions.