Background

Designing and fabricating an efficient heterostructured photocatalyst for degrading organic pollutants is a major concern for environmental remediation researchers. In that series we fabricated a P25-TiO₂/In₂O₃ (PT/In) heterostructured nanocomposite via the facile ultrasonication and sol-gel synthesis method.

Methods

In both solution and gas-phase methods, the photocatalytic efficiency of the obtained PT/In nanocomposite was investigated. DRIFT-IR was measured at room temperature with the effect of adsorbed ethanol molecules, which would be used as a different approach to confirm the photocatalytic reaction mechanism.

Significant Findings

Under UV-Visible light illumination, the PT/In-4 nanocomposite was found to be an excellent photocatalyst for degrading Acid Blue (AB) dye. The calculated degradation rate constant (k) of PT/In-4 was 4.0 × 10⁻² min^−1, which was 13.3 and 5.7 times higher than that of PT-4 (0.3 × 10⁻² min⁻¹) and bare In₂O₃ (0.7 × 10⁻² min⁻¹) materials, respectively. The enhancement in photocatalytic performance is owing to the synergistic effect of the heterojunction between TiO₂ and In₂O₃ and a reduction in the recombination rate. Furthermore, the PT/In-4 nanocomposite showed high stability even after five consecutive cycles. The photocatalytic mechanism was proposed based on experimental results obtained through the gas phase photocatalytic studies via DRIFT-IR technique.

中文翻译：

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超声波改性的 P25-TiO2 /In2O3 异质结构纳米粒子：一种用于溶液和气相反应的高效双响应光催化剂

背景

设计和制造用于降解有机污染物的高效异质结构光催化剂是环境修复研究人员的主要关注点。在该系列中，我们通过简便的超声波处理和溶胶-凝胶合成方法制造了 P25-TiO ₂ /In ₂ O ₃ (PT/In) 异质结构纳米复合材料。

方法

在溶液和气相方法中，研究了所得 PT/In 纳米复合材料的光催化效率。DRIFT-IR 在室温下在吸附乙醇分子的作用下进行测量，这将用作一种不同的方法来确认光催化反应机理。

重要发现

在紫外-可见光照射下，发现 PT/In-4 纳米复合材料是降解酸性蓝 (AB) 染料的优良光催化剂。PT/In-4 的计算降解速率常数 (k) 为 4.0 × 10 ^-2 min ^{-1 ，}是 PT-4 (0.3 × 10 ^-2 min ^-1 ) 和裸 In 的13.3 倍和 5.7 倍₂ O ₃ (0.7 × 10 ^-2 min ^-1 ) 材料。光催化性能的提高是由于 TiO ₂和 In ₂ O ₃之间异质结的协同作用和重组率的降低。此外，即使在连续五次循环后，PT/In-4 纳米复合材料仍显示出高稳定性。基于通过 DRIFT-IR 技术进行气相光催化研究获得的实验结果，提出了光催化机理。