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Project

True colours of titanium dioxide - coloured titania and their advanced characterisation for use in CO2 reduction and sensing applications

Titanium-dioxide-based materials (titania) are semiconductors with many versatile applications in chemical catalysis, electrochemical sensing, food industry, energy conversion and many more. A considerable part of these applications rely on the electron-hole formation in titania by the absorption of light in the UV range. However, this restricts many practical applications, since sunlight has a limited UV content. Coloured titania, such as grey and black titania, can be formed via thermal, chemical or sonochemical reduction pathways. Although these materials absorb light in the visible range, there is many conflicting data reported about their activity and involved mechanistic pathways. There is also no consensus on the optimal synthesis routes to enhance specific favorable material characteristics. The large heterogeneity in coloured titania materials and their syntheses used in literature hampers a clear correlation between synthesis, electronic structure and activity. In this concerted action, we aim at a controlled alteration of the reduction conditions of porous titania linked to a direct determination of a variety of properties, such as electron traps, surface-adsorbed and surface-reacted species, bulk defects, band gap, polymorphs and pore sizes, and to activity measurements. For the latter we will test their capacity for photocatalytic reduction of CO2 and their applicability as electrode material in the electrochemical sensing of phenolic compounds in water. With this approach we guarantee that the results of the different experiments can be directly compared and correlated. This will allow determining the key factors governing the relation between synthesis, electronic and geometric structure and activity of coloured titania. This knowledge will be translated in optimal synthesis conditions for the here proposed applications, of importance in sustainable chemistry and development. The project makes use of the unique complementary expertise in the synthesis, experimental and theoretical characterization and application of titanium-dioxide-based materials available at UAntwerp.
Date:1 Jan 2021 →  Today
Keywords:SENSOR MATERIALS, ELECTRON PARAMAGNETIC RESONANCE (EPR), PHOTOCATALYSIS, STRUCTURE ACTIVITY RELATIONS
Disciplines:Semiconductors and semimetals, Chemical aspects of sensor technology, Spectroscopic methods, Chemical characterisation of materials, Heterogeneous catalysis