A variety of adsorbates have been combined with TiO2 to form surface complexes that enable the absorption of visible light through a ligand-to-metal charge transfer (LMCT) process. However, proteins have not been investigated as a complex ligand for the LMCT sensitization of TiO2. In this study, we employed albumin as a model protein and investigated an albumin/TiO2 LMCT complex for visible light photocatalysis. We confirmed the surface adsorption of albumin on TiO2 using various analytical methods such as Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, zeta-potential analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). The LMCT process occurs between the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level of albumin to the conduction band of TiO2. The surface complex of albumin and TiO2 induced significant reductive conversion of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) and production of H2O2 from O2 reduction under visible light irradiation (λ > 420 nm). In contrast, surface fluorination of TiO2 (F-TiO2) hindered the complex formation with albumin, which markedly decreased the visible light reactivity. We also confirmed that reaction parameters such as the mass ratio of albumin to TiO2, irradiation wavelengths, initial pH, and temperature considerably influenced the activity of the albumin/TiO2 complex.

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Can a robot be a personal dating coach? Even with the increasing amount of conversational data on the internet, the implementation of conversational robots remains a challenge. In particular, a detailed and professional counseling log is expensive and not publicly accessible. In this paper, we develop a robot dating coaching system leveraging corpus from online communities. We examine people's perceptions of the dating coaching robot with a dialogue module. 97 participants joined to have a conversation with the robot, and 30 of them evaluated the robot. The results indicate that participants thought the robot could become a dating coach while considering the robot is entertaining rather than helpful.

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