New research article online!

The final version of our recently accepted research article has been published today in Ceramics International. The article is titled "Interface excess on Sb-doped TiO2 photocatalysts and its influence on photocatalytic activity", and is a result of the beautiful MSc work by Mr H Gandelman.

In this research, we investigated the effects of Sb doping on the properties of TiO2 nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were prepared by a polymeric precursor method, with the compositional range varying from 0 to 2 mol% Sb, which was quantified in terms of bulk, grain-boundary (GB) and surface. Our results showed that Sb interfacial segregation at both surface and GB increased the specific surface areas, reduced the crystallite sizes, increased the presence of the rutile phase, and changed the CO2 adsorption capacity. We tested its effect in the photogeneration of charges by measuring its photoactivity in the degradation of acetaminophen (ACT) under UV irradiation. This analysis revealed an increase of ~53% of activity for 0.05 mol% Sb-doped TiO2 compared to undoped TiO2, suggesting that structural changes combined with the presence of Sb species contributed to increasing the number of surface-available electron-hole pairs.

This work is part of the efforts of the RCGI – Research Centre for Gas Innovation, hosted by the University of São Paulo (USP) and sponsored by FAPESP – São Paulo Research Foundation (2014/50279-4) and Shell Brasil, and we acknowledge the strategic importance of the support given by ANP (Brazil's National Oil, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency) through

the R&D levy regulation.