Journal
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES
Volume 12, Issue 5, Pages 5750-5758Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b18359
Keywords
defects engineering; lithiothermic reduction; oxygen vacancies; phase transition; CO2 photoreduction; photothermal performance
Funding
- National Key R&D Program of China [2016YFA0201100]
- Thousand Talents Program for Young Researchers
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21601083]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
- Jiangsu Innovative and Entrepreneurial Talent Award
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [BK20160614]
- Technical Center of Nano Fabrication and Characterization, Nanjing University
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Defects engineering of oxides plays a vital role in tuning their physicochemical and electronic properties and thereby determining their potential applications. However, the safe and controllable production of effective defects in the oxides is still challenging. Here, we report a facile one-pot solid lithiothermic reduction approach to generate graded oxygen defects in TiO2 nanoparticles. Various levels of lithium reduction are systematically studied, and meanwhile, a distinct phase transition from anatase TiO2 to cubic LixTiO2 is observed with the increasing lithium ratio. The structure and evolution of surface defects and bulk phase transition are investigated in detail. Afterward, we demonstrate their applications in carbon dioxide photoreduction and photothermal imaging. The slightly reduced TiO2 with effective oxygen defects affords a highly broadened solar spectrum absorption and yields significantly enhanced visible photocatalytic activity in CO2 conversion, which is further revealed by theoretical calculations. The highly reduced TiO2 with obvious phase transition shows enhanced solar absorption and achieves high photo-thermal-conversion efficacy, showing huge potential in photo-thermal-related applications. The lithiothermic reduction is a general and effective approach to produce defects and induce phase transition in oxides, which can be used in multiple applications.
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