Highly stable visible‐light photocatalytic properties of black rutile TiO2 hydrogenated in ultrafast flow

Abstract

The hydrogenation and introducing oxygen vacancies (V O ) can lead to surface lattice-disorder in TiO 2 , which is a new form of TiO 2 named black TiO 2 , with excellent visible-light photocatalytic activity, but this TiO 2 is easy to failure because oxidation makes the concentration of surface V O decrease rapidly in a short time. In this work, black TiO 2 nanoparticles with V O almost concentrated inside nanoparticles were fabricated under ultrafast hydrogen ow. These bulk V O shortened the bandgaps of black TiO 2 , enhanced its visible light absorption, and meanwhile provided extremely strong stability. A series of characterization methods con rmed the location of V O , and degradation experiments on Cr 6+ or rhodamine B demonstrated the good visible-light photocatalytic performance of our material. After 18 months of natural aging treatment (in the air), our samples showed no discoloration and maintained 89.5% photocatalytic e ciency, and further study exhibited that this black TiO 2 also contained excellent acidresistance and moderate alkaline-resistance. This work could help design lattice-disorder to obtain more stable and practical black TiO 2 .