Now showing 1 - 10 of 15
  • Publication
    First-principles calculation of electronic structure of V-doped anatase TiO2
    (Wiley, 2010-08-23) ;
    The energetic and electronic structures of V-doped anatase TiO2 have been investigated systematically by the GGA+U approach, including replacement of Ti by V in the absence and presence of oxygen vacancies and the presence of an interstitial site. It was found that V should exist as a V4+ ion in the replacement of Ti in the anatase lattice, the electron transitions of which to the conduction band from V 3d states are responsible for the experimentally observed visible-light absorption. The influence of V dopant concentration on the electronic and magnetic properties is also discussed, such as the influence of the U value in systems containing oxygen vacancies and spin flip phenomena for interstitial V-doping.
    Scopus© Citations 28  1504
  • Publication
    Electronic properties of F/Zr co-doped anatase TiO2 photocatalysts from GGA + U calculations
    (Elsevier, 2010-10-08) ;
    The energetic and electronic properties of F and/or Zr-doped anatase TiO2 are investigated by first-principles calculations. For F-doping, reduced Ti3+ ions are formed and Ti orbitals lie slightly below the conduction band, leading to band gap narrowing. For Zr-doping, Zr 4d orbitals reside well into the conduction band, with essentially no band gap change. For F/Zr–codoping, the electronic structure is similar to that for F–monodoping, where Ti3+ gap states are induced by both the oxygen vacancy and F dopant. The influence of oxygen vacancies indicates that interplay between dopants and oxygen vacancies is key for improvement of photocatalytic activity. The theoretical findings present a reasonable explanation of recent experimental results.
      3722Scopus© Citations 27
  • Publication
    Study of translational, librational and intra-molecular motion of adsorbed liquid water monolayers at various TiO2 interfaces
    Equilibrium classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been performed to investigate the vibrational motion of water in contact with rutile-(110), rutile-(100), rutile-(001), anatase-(101) and anatase-(001) surfaces at room temperature (300 K). The vibrational density of states (VDOS) of the first adsorbed monolayer of liquid water has been analysed for each surface. These have been compared with reported experimental INS values involving rutile and anatase polymorph surfaces, along with ab initio MD results. It is observed that good qualitative agreement is obtained for the rutile-(110) and the anatase-(101) surfaces with the corresponding experimental VDOS. A significant contribution from librational dynamics is found for planar rutile surfaces, but no such demarcation is seen in the experimental VDOS.
    Scopus© Citations 27  769
  • Publication
    Molecular dynamics study of water in contact with TiO2 rutile-110, 100, 101, 001 and anatase-101, 001 surface
    We have carried out classical molecular dynamics of various surfaces of TiO2 with its interface with water. We report the geometrical features of the first and second monolayers of water using a Matsui Akaogi (MA) force field for the TiO2 surface and a flexible single point charge model for the water molecules. We show that the MA force field can be applied to surfaces other than Rutile-(110). It was found that water OH bond lengths, H-O-H bond angles and dipole moments do not vary due to the nature of the surface. However, their orientation within the first and second monolayers suggest that planar Rutile-(001) and Anatase-(001) surfaces may play an important role in not hindering removal of the products formed on these surfaces. Also, we discuss the effect of surface termination in order to explain the layering of water molecules throughout the simulation box.
      1235Scopus© Citations 82
  • Publication
    Estimation of zeta potentials of titania nanoparticles by molecular simulation
    Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulations have been performed for static electric fields for a range of positively charged spherical rutile–titania nanoparticles with radii of 1.5 to 2.9 nm for two different salt concentrations in water, in order to simulate electrophoresis directly. Using the observed limiting drag velocities, Helmholtz–Smoluchowski (HS) theory was used to estimate their ζ potentials. These estimates were compared to values from numerical solution of the non-linear Poisson–Boltzmann (PB) equation for representative configurations of the nanoparticles, in addition to idealised analytic and Debye–Hückel (DH) solutions about spherical particles of the same geometry and charge state, for the given salt concentrations. It was found that reasonable agreement was obtained between the various approaches, with the NEMD-HS results some 15%–15% smaller than the numerical PB results for more highly charged nanoparticles.
    Scopus© Citations 14  1105
  • Publication
    Synergistic effects on band gap-narrowing in titania by codoping from first-principles calculations
    (ACS Publications, 2010-02-12) ;
    The large intrinsic band gap in TiO2 has hindered severely its potential application for visible-light irradiation. In this study, we have used a passivated approach to modify the band edges of anatase-TiO2 by codoping of X (N, C) with transition metals (TM=W, Re, Os) to extend the absorption edge to longer visible-light wavelengths. It was found that all the codoped systems can narrow the band gap significantly; in particular, (N+W)-codoped systems could serve as remarkably better photocatalysts with both narrowing of the band gap and relatively smaller formation energies and larger binding energies than those of (C+TM) and (N+TM)-codoped systems. Our theoretical calculations provide meaningful guides for experiments to develop more powerful visible-light photocatalysts.
    Scopus© Citations 135  1312
  • Publication
    A TD-DFT study of the effects of structural variations on the photochemistry of polyene dyes
    We report a TD-DFT study of three polyene dyes namely: NKX-2553, NKX-2554 and NKX-2569 in isolation as well as upon their adsorption on TiO2 nanoparticles. By choosing closely related dyes we wish to focus on the effects of structural variations on the absorption and charge-transfer properties of these systems. These three dyes show a non-intuitive trend in their respective efficiencies and therefore, were chosen to shed light on the structural components that contribute to this behaviour. Although, NKX-2554 has an additional donor group, it is less efficient compared to the simpler NKX-2553 dye that contains only one donor group. When NKX-2554 structure is slightly modified by lengthening the linker-group, one obtains the most efficient dye among this set, namely, NKX-2569. In this work, we show that the changes in the donor moiety has very little or no effect on the efficiency of these dyes as can be seen in the case of NKX-2553 and NKX-2554. On the other hand, the improved performance of NKX-2569-titania complex can be understood to be a result of the longer linker group. A better understanding of these properties within different dye-titania complexes is important for the continual improvement of DSSCs. In this regards, this study will serve to provide guidelines to improve efficiencies of novel organic dyes.
    Scopus© Citations 39  934
  • Publication
    Band gap engineering of (N, Ta)-codoped TiO2 : a first-principles calculation
    (Elsevier, 2009-07-29) ;
    The electronic properties and photocatalytic activity of X (N, C) / transition metal (TM=Ta, Hf, Fe) – codoped anatase TiO2 have been investigated using density functional theory. It was found that only the (N, Ta)-codoping case narrows the band gap significantly by about 0.48 eV, driven by the continuum-like p-d hybridized states above the top of valence band and d states at the bottom of conduction band. The calculated energy results suggest that codoping of Ta with N can increase the N concentration in N-doped TiO2 based on energy results.
    Scopus© Citations 96  1948
  • Publication
    Hydrogen bond dynamical properties of adsorbed liquid water monolayers with various TiO2 interfaces
    Equilibrium classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been performed to investigate the hydrogen bonding kinetics of water in contact with rutile-(110), rutile-(101), rutile-(100), and anatase-(101) surfaces at room temperature (300 K). It was observed that anatase-(101) exhibits the longest-lived hydrogen bonds in terms of overall persistence, followed closely by rutile-(110). The relaxation times, defined as the integral of the autocorrelation of the hydrogen bond persistence function, were also larger for these two cases, while decay of autocorrelation function was slower. The increased number and overall persistence of hydrogen bonds in the adsorbed water monolayers at these surfaces, particularly for anatase-(101), may serve to promote possible water photolysis activity thereon.
    Scopus© Citations 25  659
  • Publication
    Fabrication of nano-structured TiO2 coatings using a microblast deposition technique
    Micron thick titanium dioxide (TiO2) coatings exhibiting a nano-structured, anatase, meso-porous structure were successfully deposited across a range of polymer, conductive glass and metallic substrates at low velocities using a microblasting technique. This process was conducted at atmospheric pressure using compressed air as the carrier gas and commercially available agglomerated nano particles of TiO2 as the feedstock. An examination of the effect of impact kinetics on the agglomerated powder before and after deposition was undertaken. A further examination of the coating microstructure along with photocurrent density measurements before and after thermal treatments was explored. Owing to the low temperature and velocity of the powder during deposition no change in phase of the powder or damage to the substrate was observed. The resulting TiO2 coatings exhibited relatively good adhesion on both titanium and FTO coated glass substrates with coating thickness of approximately 1.5 μm. Photo-catalytic performance was measured under solar simulator illumination using a photo-electrochemical cell (PEC) with a 5-fold increase in performance observed after thermal treatment of the TiO2 coated substrates. Microblasting was demonstrated to be a rapid and cost effective method for the deposition of nano-structured, photo-catalytic, anatase TiO2 coatings.
    Scopus© Citations 10  1631