Congratulations to PGR Zahid Hussain, who is lead author of the paper ‘Surface functionalized N-C-TiO2/C nanocomposites derived from metal-organic framework in water vapour for enhanced photocatalytic H2 generation’, published in the Journal of Energy Chemistry.
Zahid’s previous publications include ‘MOF Derived Porous ZnO/C Nanocomposites for Efficient Dye Photodegradation’
published in ACS Applied Energy Materials, and ‘Structural, optical, electronic and magnetic properties of multiphase ZnO/Zn(OH)2/ZnO2 nanocomposites and hexagonal prism shaped ZnO nanoparticles synthesized by pulse laser ablation in Heptanes’ published in Elsevier Materials Chemistry and Physics.
Abstract
In this work, we have successfully demonstrated that nitrogen/carbon co-doped (anatase and rutile) TiO2 phase junction nanoparticles, homogeneously distributed in N and carboxyl group functionalized porous carbon matrix can be synthesized via simple one-step pyrolysis of titanium-based metal-organic framework (Ti-MOFs), NH2-MIL-125(Ti). Introducing water vapour at high temperature during the pyrolysis of NH2-MIL-125(Ti) results in the functionalization of the carbon matrix with carboxyl groups as well as the creation of additional localized oxygen-rich N like interstitial/intraband states above the valence band of polymorphic TiO2 nanoparticles that further narrowed the energy bandgap. The derived N-C-TiO2/C phase junction composites retain the disc-like tetragonal morphologies and textural properties inherited from the NH2-MIL-125(Ti) precursor. Without loading any noble metal co-catalyst such as Pt, Au, Pd, the sample N–C-TiO2/CArW exhibits very promising photocatalytic H2 generation from water splitting.