Research reveals microscopic mechanism of photocatalytic reaction on the surface of titanium dioxide

The surface catalytic activity and micro-reaction mechanism of titanium dioxide (TiO2) of thetitanium ore structure was revealed by the single-molecule scientific research team of the National Laboratory of Hefei Microscale Substance Science of the University of Science and Technology of China, and the paper was published in the recently published Nature-Communicationtitanium dioxide, as an oxide semiconductor, is an important material system in the study of solar energy conversionIt is expected to be used in the preparation of organic solar cells and the conversion of solar energy into environmentally friendly chemical energy, and it shows fascinating prospects in photocatalytic decomposition of water-based hydrogen and artificial photosynthesisThe research on this material system has become a hot trend in the field of new energy materials research, and it is an important scientific issue to find new catalytic materials and efficient energy conversion mechanismtitanium dioxide and redstone structure are two kinds of crystal structures that have been widely studiedAmong them, because of the stable structure and easy monocrystalline growth, the past research mainly focuses on the redstone structure of titanium dioxideComparatively speaking, the stability of titanium dioxide in the sharp titanium ore structure is low, and the chemical activity of the intuition determines that it should be higher than that of the redstone structure, and there are many theoretical calculations that support this conceptIn particular, the theory predicts that the crystal surface index of titanium dioxide in the sharp titanium ore structure is (001), which is the most active of all crystal surfacesIn recent years, a large number of materialists have invested in the synthesis of titanium dioxide nanocrystals rich in (001) surface structure, and study its photocatalytic properties, but the experimental photocatalytic efficiency and theoretical predictions are very differentin response to this problem, Professor Wang Bing and others used pulsed laser deposition technology to prepare high-quality titanium dioxide on the surface of the sharp titanium ore structure (001), and clearly revealed the structure and chemical reaction activity of the surface by using the microscopic and atomic manipulation methods of scanning tunnel microscopy (STM);