Document Type

Article

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

1.3 PHYSICAL SCIENCES, 1.4 CHEMICAL SCIENCES, Inorganic and nuclear chemistry, Colloid chemistry

Publication Details

V. Etacheri, G. Michlits, M. K. Seery, S. J. Hinder, S. C. Pillai*

ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2013, 5, (5), pp 1663–1672

A Highly Efficient TiO2-XCx Nano-Heterojunction Photocatalyst for Visible-

Light Induced Antibacterial Applications

Abstract

Visible-light-induced antibacterial activity of carbon-doped anatase-brookite titania nano-heterojunction photocatalysts are reported for the first time. These heterostructures were prepared using a novel low temperature (100 °C) non-hydrothermal low power microwave (300 W) assisted method. Formation of interband C 2p states was found to be responsible for the band gap narrowing of the carbon doped heterojunctions. The most active photocatalyst obtained after 60 minutes of microwave irradiation exhibits a 2-fold higher visible-light induced photocatalytic activity in contrast to the standard commercial photocatalyst Evonik-Degussa P-25. Staphylococcus aureus inactivation rate constant for carbon-doped nano-heterojunctions and the standard photocatalyst was 0.0023 and -0.0081 min-1 respectively. It is proposed that the photo-excited electrons (from the C 2p level) are effectively transferred from the conduction band of brookite to that of anatase causing efficient electron-hole separation, which is found to be responsible for the superior visible-light induced photocatalytic and antibacterial activities of carbon-doped anatase-brookite nano-heterojunctions.

KEYWORDS: Titanium dioxide; Microwave synthesis; Carbon-doping; Visible-light induced photocatalysis; Antibacterial activity; Heterojunctions

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1021/am302676a

Funder

EI

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