Preparation of boron-doped porous titania networks containing gold nanoparticles with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic activity.

The ability to decrease the electron/hole recombination rate, and decrease the band gap of titania to allow photoactivity on irradiation with visible light is attracting more and more attention. Here, boron doping of the titania, the deposition of gold nanoparticles, along with a meso-macroporous structure were obtained using a facile agarose gel templating process combined with sol-gel chemistry. The Au/B/TiO(2) nanocomposites were characterized using SEM, TEM, XRD, N(2) gas sorption, diffuse UV-vis, photoluminescence, and SIMS. The photocatalytic activity was assessed by degradation of an organic probe molecule (methylene blue) under visible light (λ > 420 nm). The resulting materials achieved photocatalytic activities up to 50% greater than the commercial Degussa P25 under visible light. The enhancement in photocatalytic activity was primarily attributed to the decrease in band gap as a result of the boron doping and its influence on the anatase to rutile phase formation: The doped materials were highly crystalline and an optimum anatase to rutile ratio (3:1) was obtained with 0.25 wt % boron in the sample calcined at 650 °C. In addition, the presence of the gold nanoparticles decreased recombination between the photoexcited electrons and holes, which further improved the photocatalytic activity.