Recently, aluminum titanate (Al₂TiO₅)-based nanostructures have been proved to serve as an efficient photocatalytic material with satisfactory photodegradation capacity. In this study, the citrate sol–gel method was used to synthesize these nanostructures and inspect the significant impacts of nitrogen-doping-originated crystalline defects on their photocatalytic performance in some details for the first time. The results indicated that the penetration of nitrogen atoms into AT crystal lattice, depending on the nitriding time and temperature, can induce a great deal of the residual stress and result in propagating the existing cracks and breaking down the particles. The XPS and FTIR results confirmed the formation of some new bonds in the crystal structure (including O-Ti-N and Ti-N), the substitutional and interstitial replacement of nitrogen atoms with oxygen atoms, oxygen vacancies, and the attachment of nitrogen species at superficial oxygen sites. These events may vary the bandgap values from 2.88 eV for pristine AT to 2.73 eV for the nitrided one, thereby manipulating the charge carrier recombination rate and activation of superficial catalytic reactions in the particles. Numerically, the band structure variations can efficiently increase the photodegradation efficiency of methylene blue (MB) and apparent rate constant (k) by 1.4 times (from 38.9 to 55.9%) and 1.8 times (from 0.0038 to 0.0068 min⁻¹), respectively. Finally, the results show that the synthesized photocatalyst can successfully compete with TiO₂-based photocatalysts in terms of photocatalytic performance.

最近，钛酸铝（Al ₂ TiO ₅）的纳米结构已被证明可以用作具有令人满意的光降解能力的有效光催化材料。在这项研究中，首次使用柠檬酸溶胶-凝胶法合成了这些纳米结构，并首次考察了氮掺杂引发的晶体缺陷对其光催化性能的重大影响。结果表明，氮原子渗透到AT晶格中的时间取决于氮化时间和温度，会引起大量的残余应力，并导致现有裂纹的扩展和颗粒的破碎。XPS和FTIR结果证实了在晶体结构中形成了一些新的键（包括O-Ti-N和Ti-N），氮原子被氧原子取代和填隙，氧空位，以及表层氧位处的氮物种附着。这些事件可能会将带隙值从原始AT的2.88 eV更改为氮化的2.73 eV的带隙值，从而控制电荷载流子的复合速率并激活颗粒中的表面催化反应。在数值上，能带结构变化可以有效地将亚甲基蓝（MB）和表观速率常数（k）的光降解效率提高1.4倍（从38.9％至55.9％）和1.8倍（从0.0038至0.0068分钟）^-1）。最后，结果表明，合成的光催化剂在光催化性能方面可以与TiO ₂基光催化剂成功竞争。