Artículos SCI

A series of titanium oxide catalysts modified with yttrium has been prepared by sol-gel method and their structural properties have been studied. The incorporation of yttrium in the titania lattice favors the formation of oxygen vacancies while at low Y loadings the anatase structure is preserved. The catalytic activity of these solids for CO oxidation is found to be significantly dependent on their physical properties. In particular the amount of dopant controls the number of surface oxygen vacancies created as well as the gold particle size, which directly affects the catalytic activity. Also, a linear relationship between the catalytic activity and the band gap values, which depend on the Y loading, is observed. Density functional theory based calculations show that Y atoms are incorporated at the TiO2 surface at substitutional positions only, while the preferred oxygen vacancies arise by removing the bridge surface oxygen atoms. These O-vacancies are the preferential adsorption sites for Au atoms and nanoparticles, acting as nucleation centers that favor the dispersion of the catalyst active phase over the support surface. In agreement with experiment, Y doping is found to decrease the band gap of the support due to a destabilization of the valence band of the oxide. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011.

Phase transition of anatase nanoparticles into the phases TiO2-II and rutile under grinding was studied. The addition of ammonium carbamate to the reaction mixture inhibits the phase conversion and the cold welding of particles. The UV-visible absorption spectrum showed narrowing the band gap width after grinding with an ammonium carbamate additive resulting in shift of the light absorption of the ground sample towards the visible region. By EPR, intensive formation of OH• radical at irradiation of the sample with both UV (λ > 300 nm) and visible (λ > 435 nm) light was observed. High photocatalytic activity of the ground sample in visible light region was demonstrated also by measurement of kinetics of the photocatalytic decomposition of 4-chlorophenol.