Structure of the Amorphous Titania Precursor Phase of N-doped Photocatalysts

Overview

Journal RSC Adv

Publisher Royal Society of Chemistry

Specialty Chemistry

Date 2022 Apr 15

PMID 35423361

Authors

I E Grey

P Bordet

N C Wilson

Affiliations

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Abstract

Amorphous titania samples prepared by ammonia solution neutralization of titanyl sulphate have been characterized by chemical and thermal analyses, and with reciprocal-space and real-space fitting of wide-angle synchrotron X-ray scattering data. A model that fits both the chemical and structural data comprises small segments of lepidocrocite-type layer that are offset by corner-sharing as in the monoclinic titanic acids HTi O·HO. The amorphous phase composition that best fits the combined chemical and scattering data is [(NH)HTiO]·14HO, where the formula within the brackets is the cluster composition and the HO outside the brackets is physically adsorbed. The NH cations are an integral part of the clusters and are bonded to layer anions at the corners of the offset layers, as occurs in the alkali metal stepped-layer titanates. The stepped-layer model is shown to give a consistent mechanism for the reaction of aqueous ammonia with solid hydrated titanyl sulphate, in which the amorphous product retains the exact size and shape of the reacting titanyl sulphate crystals.

Citing Articles

Long-Term Stability of TiS-Alkylamine Hybrid Materials.

Ursi F, Virga S, Garcia-Espejo G, Masciocchi N, Martorana A, Giannici F Materials (Basel). 2022; 15(23).

PMID: 36499793 PMC: 9736076. DOI: 10.3390/ma15238297.

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