Reduction and characterization of the band-gap of TiO2 nanoparticles

Abstract

Water contamination is one of the main challenges we face. It consists on the release of substances into groundwater, lakes, streams, rivers and oceans to the extent that substances interfere with the beneficial use of water or with the natural functioning of ecosystems. Most of this pollutants can degrade by reacting with photocatalyst of TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs).[2] The problem is that TiO2 NPs require the absorption of ultraviolet radiation and it only represents a small percentage of sunlight. Therefore the decomposition has a very low performance. This fact is due to it has a large band gap (approc 3eV) and therefore it needs to absorb large amound of light energy to be able to produce photocatalysis. To improve this performance TiO2 NPs will be synthesized and thermal and chemical treatments to synthesize black TiO2 will be performed that has a smaller band gap, which can produce photocatalysis absorbing lower wavelengths (from UV to visible regions), representing a high percentage of sunlight