Tunable Composition Aqueous-Synthesized Mixed-Phase TiO2 Nanocrystals for Photo-Assisted Water Decontamination: Comparison of Anatase, Brookite and Rutile Photocatalysts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mixed-phase nanoTiO2 materials attract a lot of attention as advanced photocatalysts for water decontamination due to their intrinsic structure that allows better photo-excited e−cb-h+vb charge separation, hence improved photocatalytic efficiency. Currently, the best-known mixed-phase TiO2 photocatalyst is P25 with approximate composition 80% Anatase/20% Rutile (A/r). Apart from Anatase (A) and Rutile (R) phases, there is Brookite (B) which has been evaluated less as photocatalyst in mixed-phase nanoTiO2 systems. In this work we present a sustainable solution process to synthesize tunable composition mixed-phase nanotitania photocatalysts in a continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR) by modulating conditions like pH, CTiCl4 and time. In particular three mixed-phase TiO2 nanomaterials were produced, namely one predominantly anatase with brookite as minor component (A/b), one predominantly brookite with minor component rutile (B/r), and one predominantly rutile with minor component brookite (R/b) and evaluated as photocatalysts in the degradation of methyl orange. The three semiconducting nanomaterials were characterized by XRD and Raman spectroscopy to quantify the phase ratios and subjected to nano-morphological characterization by FE-SEM and TEM/HR-TEM. The new mixed-phase nanoTiO2 materials are shown to be endowed with large specific surface area, ranging from 90–125 m2 g−1, double of that of P25, to be mesoporous and be surface-rich in Ti–OH molecular groups varying from 12%–20% versus 4% for P25. These properties though impact the adsorptive capacity with R/b and B/r removing > 50% of MO but not photocatalytic activity. The latter depends on nanograined mixed-phase structure and not mere assembly of different phase nanoparticles. First-order rate constants reveal essentially equivalent photocatalytic activity for anatase nanocrystals with either rutile (P25) or brookite (this work) domains.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".