Fe effect on the optical properties of TiO 2 :Fe 2 O 3 nanostructured composites supported on SiO 2 microsphere assembli
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NANO EXPRESS
Open Access
Fe effect on the optical properties of TiO2:Fe2O3 nanostructured composites supported on SiO2 microsphere assemblies Jesús I Peña-Flores1, Abraham F Palomec-Garfias1, César Márquez-Beltrán1*, Enrique Sánchez-Mora1, Estela Gómez-Barojas2 and Felipe Pérez-Rodríguez1
Abstract The effect of Fe ion concentration on the morphological, structural, and optical properties of TiO2 films supported on silica (SiO2) opals has been studied. TiO2:Fe2O3 films were prepared by the sol-gel method in combination with a vertical dip coating procedure; precursor solutions of Ti and Fe were deposited on a monolayer of SiO2 opals previously deposited on a glass substrate by the same procedure. After the dip coating process has been carried out, the samples were thermally treated to obtain the TiO2:Fe2O3/SiO2 composites at the Fe ion concentrations of 1, 3, and 5 wt%. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrographs show the formation of colloidal silica microspheres of about 50 nm diameter autoensembled in a hexagonal close-packed fashion. Although the X-ray diffractograms show no significant effect of Fe ion concentration on the crystal structure of TiO2, the μ-Raman and reflectance spectra do show that the intensity of a phonon vibration mode and the energy bandgap of TiO2 decrease as the Fe+3 ion concentration increases. Keywords: TiO2:Fe2O3 films; Nanostructured composites; SiO2 microsphere assemblies; Sol-gel; Dip coating
Background SiO2 microsphere assemblies coated with metal oxide films have been considered as promising candidate materials for applications in photocatalysis due to their large surface area, excellent accessibility to the inner surface, and suitable morphology in comparison with powder materials. For example, mesoporous TiO2 films perform quite well in the decomposing of pollutants and in the generation of hydrogen by water splitting [1]. Also, the TiO2 is the most promising catalyst due to its high efficiency, stability, and low cost. It has been used widely in the photocatalytic degradation of phenol. However, one disadvantage of TiO2 for industrial applications is the need of filtration after the photodegradation process. Recently, the research has been focused on modifying the surface or the bulk of a semiconductor catalyst by adding transition metal impurities, which give rise to the mixed oxide semiconductor formation [2]. * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Instituto de Física, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Apdo. Post. J-48, Puebla Pue. 72570, México Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
However, few research studies have been concerned to surface wetting application. One interest point in our current research is to observe the effect of light adsorption on surface materials with respect to their wetting properties particularly of the Fe2O3:TiO2/SiO2 composites; this topic has attracted significant scientific attention particularly for biological systems. A method for the fabrication of thin films using sol-gel is the dip coat
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