Modifications on reduced titanium dioxide photocatalysts: A review

A large variety of reduced titanium dioxide (TiO2-x) materials have been reported recently. Reduced TiO2, usually resulting from the removal of oxygen atoms or hydrogen incorporation, is proved to be efficient for achieving highly photocatalytic performance including photodegradation of organic compounds, hydrogen generation from water splitting, CO2 reduction for CH4 evolution, solar cells, etc. To further impbove the properties and activities ofTiO(2-x), a combination of the Ti3+ self-doping and other traditional modifications like nonmetals doping has been proposed in the past decades. This paper provides a general and critical review on the further modifications on reduced TiO2 samples, including non-metal elements (N, B, S, F and I) doping, noble-metal (Au, Pt, Pd and Ag) and iron-group metal (Fe, Co and Ni) grafting, metal oxide compositing, carbon (nanotubes and graphene) and carbon-based-material compositing, special facets exposure (mainly dual {001}-{101} and {111}-{0101} facets) of TiO2-x and ordered structure controlling of TiO2-x These modifications enhance the physical and/or chemical properties of the reduced TiO2, or create new features for the modified TiO2-x samples, which finally leads to the enhancement of photocatalytic performance. Key examples such as N-doping, Au grafting and graphene-based coin positing are discussed carefully, and the mechanisms for solar light enhancement, electron transfer and charge separation are also investigated. Finally, some challenging issues on TiO2-x catalysts are also proposed to encourage new approaches for preparation of TiO2-x catalysts with efficiently photocatalytic performance. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.