title: The role of electron interfacial transfer in mesoporous nano-TiO2photocatalysis: a combined study of in situ photoconductivity and numerical kinetic simulation.
abstract: In this research, a combination of in situ photoconductivity (σ) and kinetic simulations was used to study the role of electron interfacial transfer (IT) in the gaseous photocatalysis of formic acid by mesoporous nanocrystalline TiO2. The effects of light intensity, initial formic acid concentrations, oxygen amounts, and temperature on the in situ σ and the photocatalytic courses were studied in detail. The temperature dependence of in situ σ clearly shows that the electron transfer is determined by the IT of electrons to O2rather than by the transport. It was seen that the electron IT limits the photocatalysis by correlating with the recombination and the hole IT via the dynamic change in electron densities. The numerical simulation of in situ σ shows that the IT of electrons belongs to a thermally activated process that presents a thermal barrier of 0.5 eV. It is considered that this high thermal barrier limits the IT of electrons. It was also seen that the thermal activation of photocatalysis does not relate to that of the electron IT, although the overall photocatalysis is limited by the IT of electrons. Our finding shows that it is an effective way to increase the photocatalytic activity by reducing the thermal barrier of electron IT.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan City, Hubei Province 430070, People's Republic of China. liubaoshun@126.com opluse@whut.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Baoshun
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0090-7097
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan City, Hubei Province 430070, People's Republic of China. liubaoshun@126.com opluse@whut.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jingjing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan City, Hubei Province 430070, People's Republic of China. liubaoshun@126.com opluse@whut.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Xiujian
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2517-2605
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Material Synthesis and processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan City, Hubei Province 430070, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jiaguo
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0612-8633
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu