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Study of Influence of Crystalline Phase of TiO2/MWCNT Novel Materials on the Photoelectrochemical Activity

Tuesday, 2 October 2018
Universal Ballroom (Expo Center)
G. Rosado, Y. Verde Gómez (TECNM/Instituto Tecnológico de Cancún), N. Alonso-Vante Sr. (IC2MP - UMR-CNRS 7285 Universite de Poitiers), and A. M. Valenzuela-Muñiz (CONACYT-TECNM / Instituto Tecnológico de Cancún)
Titanium dioxide is a low cost material, environmental friendly and one of the most attractive semiconductors, due to this it has a wide spectrum of applications in photocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis. In this work, TiO2 nanoparticles in anatase and anatase-brookite phases were synthetized by sol-gel method, and deposited on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). A solution of Titanium (IV) Isopropoxide was mixed with MWCNT by ultrasonication, the suspension was kept in an ice bath (around 0o C), and water was added for the hydrolysis reaction. Anatase phase was obtained placing the so-gel product in a thermal treatment at 4000C during 2 hours. For anatase-brookite mixture, the sol-gel product was placed in a reflux system at 800C during 5 hours. Once the solution was cooled at room temperature, the pH was adjusted to 2. Finally, after a filtration process, the obtained material was dried and thermally treated at 4000C. In order to compare, anatase and anatase-brookite nanoparticles without MWCNT were synthesized. The materials were physically and chemically analyzed by scanning and transmission electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, Raman spectroscopy, surface area analysis (BET method) and X-ray diffraction. For the photoelectrochemical measurements, a three electrode cell assembly was used having 0.5M H2SO4 as base electrolyte. The working electrode was prepared by depositing the synthetized materials in a conducting glass substrate. Ag/AgCl (KCl sat) electrode and a Pt wire was used as reference and counter electrode respectively. During the analysis the working electrode was irradiated with UV light and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) was performed in order to obtain photocurrent values. Photocurrents transients were obtained by light chopping with on-off periods of 5s. An extensive analysis and discussion of the obtained physicochemical results as well as the photocatalytic performance will be presents at the conference.