Photocatalytic Enhancement of SiO2 coated Degussa P25 TiO2 Nanoparticles by Scalable Atmospheric Pressure Atomic Layer Deposition

Abstract

This work investigates the enhancement of photocatalytic activity of titanium dioxide (TiO2) commercial particles by ultrathin silicon dioxide (SiO2) films deposited via atmospheric pressure atomic layer deposition (ALD) carried out in fluidized bed reactor (FBR). The ALD process enabled precise control for the growth of ultrathin film at sub-nanometer level. At an operating temperature which can be lowered to room temperature (~27 °C), the growth per cycle (GPC) smaller than 1 angstrom (~0.8 Å) allowed us to study on the relationship between the thickness of SiO2 thin film and photocatalytic activities of SiO2 coated TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs). Importantly, a considerable enhancement of photocatalytic activity was found which resulted from the formation of crosslinking of Si-O-Ti bonds in the interface between SiO2 and P25 TiO2 nanoparticles as indicated by XPS and FT-IR. The band gap of this interfacial layer can be tuned from 3.10 to 3.23 eV slightly narrower than P25 TiO2 by varying the number of ALD cycles and the ALD processes at different temperature corresponding to the thickness of SiO2 thin film. Such band gap led to a red-shift of the absorption spectra which means the better absorption of visible light and enhanced the charge transfer from TiO2 to the interface, thereby prevented the rapid recombination of generated carriers. As for the precursors SiCl4 and deionized water vapor, the saturating state of dosing at the first stage of ALD process related to self-limiting reaction can be got after 5 seconds. In addition, annealing could also enable the enhancement of photocatalytic activity via modifying the morphology of interface. Practically speaking, our approach provided a scalable, energy effective and precise method to tune the photocatalytic properties of SiO2 coated Degussa P25 TiO2 nanoparticles. When it goes to applications, the enhancement of photocatalytic activity can be used for photocatalyst.