Applied Catalysis B: Environmental 144 (2014) 196–202

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Applied Catalysis B: Environmental

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apcatb

Synergistic photocatalytic effect of TiO2 coatings and p-type

semiconductive SiC foam supports for degradation of organic
contaminant
Dong Hao a,b , Zhenming Yang a , Chunhai Jiang a , Jinsong Zhang a,∗
a
Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
b
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Structured TiO2 –SiC photocatalysts were prepared by coating TiO2 nanoparticles on Si incorporated SiC
Received 15 March 2013 foam supports, and their photocatalytic activities toward degradation of organic contaminant under UV
Received in revised form 30 June 2013 light irradiation were evaluated by taking 4-aminobenzenesulfonic acid (4-ABS) as a model contaminant.
Accepted 3 July 2013
In comparison to SiC foam support and TiO2 nanoparticles the TiO2 –SiC photocatalysts exhibited signif-
Available online 13 July 2013
icantly enhanced photocatalytic performance. The effects of coating thickness of TiO2 and pore sizes of
the SiC foam supports on the photocatalytic activities were studied. A synergistic photocatalytic effect
Keywords:
between the p-type semiconductive SiC foam supports and the n-type TiO2 coating was proposed to
TiO2 –SiC
Composite sol–gel
account for this enhanced photocatalytic properties.
Structured photocatalyst © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Photocatalytic activity

1. Introduction substrate with TiO2 coatings might be an effective way to improve

the photocatalytic activity.
Water purification has become one of the most important Silicon carbide (SiC) foam ceramics have been considered as
water related issues along with the development of modern indus- attractive substrates for TiO2 catalyst due to their macroporous and
tries and agricultures [1,2]. As one advanced oxidation technology, three-dimensionally interconnected structure, which may effec-
photocatalysis has shown great potential in water purification, tively improve the dispersion of TiO2 and also lead to easy access
especially for degradation of various organic pollutants [3–5]. TiO2 of the contaminated water or air to the photocatalyst. Moreover,
as one of the most promising phtocatalysts has attracted special SiC foam ceramics own the merits of low density, large specific
attention because of its wide band gap, non-toxicity, chemical and surface area, anti-oxidation stability, high conductivity, high tem-
light stability [6,7]. However, powdery TiO2 catalysts must be dis- perature and corrosion resistance [14], which may enable them
persed in the reaction system to improve the efficiency, which to be used in harsh environments with high durability. In addi-
may cause easy loss of the catalyst and also difficulty in separa- tion, SiC foam ceramics can also be shaped into various forms to
tion [8]. Therefore, immobilization of TiO2 on various substrates, meet the requirements of different structured reactors [15–18].
such as glass, silicon, quartz beads, activate carbon and glass fibers, In previous works, SiC foams have been successfully used as sub-
has been a hot issue in recent years to assist the separation and strates for TiO2 coatings in structured catalysts [19,20]. However,
recycling of the catalyst [9–13]. Further, it will be desirable for the possible synergistic photocatalytic effect of SiC foams with TiO2
more rapid and efficient purification of water if a substrate can have coatings has not been reported so far. In fact, as a semiconduc-
synergistic photocatalytic effect with the TiO2 coatings besides tor with a band gap of 3.0 eV, SiC has been coupled with TiO2
functioning as a support. In other words, coupling an appropriate nanoparticles by a few researchers to form TiO2 –SiC composite
phtocatalysts [21–24]. The positive role of SiC on the enhancement
of the photocatalytic property has been confirmed. For example,
in a WO3 /SiC–TiO2 system, Keller and Garin studied the photo-
catalytic property and explained the mechanism of SiC and TiO2
∗ Corresponding author at: Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sci-
coupled for photocatalysis [21]. They believed that the coupled SiC
ences, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang 110016, China. Tel.: +86 24 23971896;
fax: +86 24 23971896. and TiO2 met the requirement of classical charge-carrier transport
E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Zhang). mechanism. The photo-induced electrons can transfer from the

0926-3373/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apcatb.2013.07.016
 D. Hao et al. / Applied Catalysis B: Environmental 144 (2014) 196–202 197

conduction band of SiC to the conduction band of TiO2 and the holes
generated on the TiO2 valence band will transfer to the valence
band of SiC. As the results, the separation of photo-induced charge
carriers and photocatalytic property of the coupled nanoparticles
are enhanced.
Based on this mechanism, we suppose that if the semicon-
ductive property of the SiC foam supports can be tuned, we may
not only solve the problems of dispersion and separation of TiO2
nanoparticles, but can also obtain a structured photocatalyst
with coupled SiC and TiO2 semiconductors to enhance the pho-
tocatalytic efficiency. For this purpose, in this work, we used Si
incorporated p-type SiC semiconductor foams as the supports and
a composite sol–gel method as was developed by Barrow et al.
to prepare the TiO2 coatings [25]. The photocatalytic properties
of the prepared TiO2 –SiC composite photocatalyst as well as the
bare SiC foams and TiO2 nanoparticles were compared by taking
4-aminobenzenesulfonic acid (4-ABS) as a model contaminant
under UV irradiation. We confirmed that the best photocatalytic
property was achieved on TiO2 –SiC composite photocatalyst. The
effects of TiO2 loadings and pore sizes of the SiC foam supports
on the photocatalytic properties of the composite photocatalysts
as well as the recycling of the composite photocatalysts were
investigated. The possible mechanism for the coupling of TiO2 Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the photo reactor. (1) UV lamp; (2) motor stirrer;
(3) quartz tube; (4) catalyst holder; (5) TiO2 –SiC foams; (6) pulley; (7) flange; (8)
and SiC form supports and the enhancement of the photocatalytic
sampling.
properties was discussed.

TiO2 and finally form the TiO2 –SiC composite photocatalysts with
2. Experimental firmly bonded TiO2 coatings on the SiC foam supports.
TiO2 –SiC composite photocatalysts with different pore sizes of
2.1. Materials SiC foams and loading amounts of TiO2 were prepared. To simplify
the description, the TiO2 –SiC composites with pore size of 1.3 mm
The SiC foam ceramics were prepared by macromolecule pyro- and TiO2 loading of 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75 g were marked as TSM-1,
genation method combined with reaction sintering. The detailed TSM-2 and TSM-3, respectively. The TiO2 –SiC composites with TiO2
preparation procedure can be found in our previous work [14]. The loading of 0.50 g and the pore sizes of 1.0 and 2.5 mm were denoted
SiC foam ceramics that have a volume fraction of 30% and pore as TSS and TSL, respectively. The photocatalytic property of the bare
sizes of 1.0, 1.3 and 2.5 mm respectively were shaped to flat rings SiC foams was also measured, as was named by SiC support.
of 56 mm in outer diameter, 28 mm in inner diameter and 12 mm
in height, respectively. Before coating of TiO2 , the SiC foam ceram- 2.3. Characterizations
ics were treated in boiling NaOH solution (10 M) for 5 min and
ultrasonically cleaned with ethanol and deionized water for several X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of the TiO2 –SiC composites was
times before they were dried at 120 ◦ C for 6 h. performed on an X-ray Diffractometer (D/Max-2500PC) with CuK␣
Tetrabutyltitanate (TBT), absolute ethanol (EtOH), aqueous radiation. Microstructures of the surface and cross-section of the
hydrochloride (HCl) and 4-aminobenzenesulfonic acid (4-ABS) TiO2 –SiC composite foams were examined using a field emission
were purchased from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Ltd. Co., China. scanning electron microscopy (LEO S360). The surface photovoltage
Commercial titanium dioxide (TiO2 ) was purchased from Nanjing of the TiO2 –SiC composite was measured by surface photovoltage
High Tech. Ltd. Co., China. All chemicals were analytical grade and spectroscopy provided by Jilin University [26].
were used as received without any further purification. Deionized
(DI) water with a resistance of 18.2 M  was used throughout in 2.4. Photocatalytic property
this study.
The photocatalytic property of the TiO2 –SiC composite foams
was evaluated by degrading 4-ABS as a model contaminant under
2.2. Preparation of TiO2 –SiC composite photocatalyst UV-light irradiation. A self-designed cylindrical quartz glass photo
reactor with an inner diameter of 80 mm and height of 200 mm
The TiO2 coating process was carried out by composite sol–gel is shown in Fig. 1. The TiO2 –SiC foams were placed on a cata-
method [25]. First, Ti-sol was prepared by mixing TBT, EtOH, HCl lyst holder, which was connected to an electric motor so that the
and DI water with the weight ratio of 5:15:1:5, followed by stirring TiO2 –SiC foams can move around the UV-lamp (PHILIPS 8 W, with
for 30 min, and then standing for 3 h at room temperature. Then, the main emission wavelength of 365 nm). A 750 mL 4-ABS solution
TiO2 powders were added into the Ti-sol with a weight percent with an initial concentration of 100 ppm was added to the reactor.
of 5 wt%. The mixture was ball-milled for 1 h to get the slurry for During photocatalysis, 5 mL of the solution was taken after a cer-
coating. Second, the SiC foam rings were dipped into the slurry and tain time interval and subjected to liquid chromatography mass
held in it for a few minutes. After being taken out, the extra slurry spectrometry measurements to determine the intermediate con-
in the pores of the SiC foams was blown off by using compressed centration of 4-ABS in the solution. Before all the experiments,
air. The coated SiC foam rings were dried at 100 ◦ C in oven. The the adsorption of 4-ABS by TiO2 –SiC composite foams was mea-
above coating procedure was repeated for several times to achieve sured under dark condition. The concentration change of 4-ABS
the expected coating mass. At last, the coated SiC foam rings were after reaching adsorption equilibrium was very small. Therefore,
calcined at 500 ◦ C for 1 h to convert the Ti-gel into nanometer-sized the adsorption of TiO2 –SiC was ignored in this study.
198 D. Hao et al. / Applied Catalysis B: Environmental 144 (2014) 196–202

phase assemblage. The Si peak almost disappears in the composites

in comparison to the bare SiC foam. The TiO2 coating shows the
typical anatase crystal structure. With the increase of TiO2 loading,
the peaks of anatase TiO2 become stronger. Meanwhile, as the SiC is
covered by anatase coating layer the peaks of ˛-SiC, ˇ-SiC become
weaker.
Fig. 3(a) shows the digital photos of SiC support and TiO2 –SiC
composite foam (TSM-2). The dark bare SiC foam (left) is sponge-
like as it was prepared from a macroporous polymer template. By
using the composite sol–gel coating process, the surface of SiC foam
support was completely and uniformly coated with TiO2 (right).
Fig. 3(b) and (c) shows the SEM images of the surface and cross-
section of a strut of TSM-2. The TiO2 coating layer is about 10 ␮m
and with TiO2 particles of approximately 10–100 nm in diameters.
The distribution of TiO2 coating over the support is continuous and
homogeneous, without observable breakage. It is worthy to note
that the TiO2 coating layer is rather porous, which will be benefi-
cial for increasing the contact area between the TiO2 particles and
the contaminated solution as well as improving the photocatalytic
efficiency.
Fig. 2. X-ray diffraction patterns of (a) SiC foam and TiO2 –SiC foam photocatalysts
named as (b) TSM-1, (c) TSM-2, and (d) TSM-3.

3. Results and discussion 3.2. The adherence of TiO2 coating and SiC foam supports

3.1. The structure and morphology of the TiO2 –SiC foam The first important thing that should be considered for struc-
photocatalysts tured catalysts is the durability and adherence between the
substrate and the coating. Therefore, we first evaluated the adher-
Fig. 2(a)–(d) shows the XRD spectra of the SiC foam support, ence of TiO2 coatings on the SiC foam supports by examining the
TSM-1, TSM-2 and TSM-3, respectively. The SiC foam is composed mass loss of TiO2 coatings during recycling tests. The TSS samples
of ˛-SiC, ˇ-SiC and Si. The existence of residual Si in the SiC foam were used for this recycling test in degradation of 4-ABS with a
leads the substrate to a p-type semiconductor. From Fig. 2(b)–(d), concentration of 10 mg/L in the solution. The mass change and pho-
we can see that the three TiO2 –SiC composite foams exhibit similar tocatalytic activity of the TiO2 –SiC composite foams were recorded

Fig. 3. (a) Digital photos of the uncoated and TiO2 coated SiC foams, (b) surface morphology of TSM-2 and (c) cross-section morphology of TSM-2.
 D. Hao et al. / Applied Catalysis B: Environmental 144 (2014) 196–202 199

Fig. 4. Mass changes of the TiO2 –SiC photocatalyst (TSL) in ten cycles of reusing.

during each test cycle. The organic adsorbed on the TiO2 –SiC foams Fig. 6. Photocatalytic efficiencies of degradation of 4-ABS with direct photolysis
were burned out at 400 ◦ C for 1 h to regenerate the photocatalysts. (rectangular), SiC foam support (dot), TiO2 particles (up-triangle) and TSM-2 (down-
triangle).
As shown in Fig. 4, there was almost no mass loss with each of the
12 measured composite phtocatalysts after 10 cycles of reusing for
photocatalysis experiments. This confirmed that the TiO2 coating photocatalysis functionality. It suggested that the SiC had acted as
layer has been firmly adhered to the SiC foam supports. The degra- a modifier to TiO2 to improve the charge separation efficiency. The
dation efficiencies of 4-ABS by TSS in the recycling tests are shown possible mechanism for this enhanced photocatalytic property of
in Fig. 5. The X-axis in Fig. 5 is the degradation time in ten cycling the TSM system will be discussed in later section.
tests. As can be seen, the TiO2 –SiC composite foam still exhibited It should be pointed out that some organics might not be
high photocatalytic activity after ten reusing cycles though a slight degraded completely during the photocatalysis. So it was important
drop of the degradation efficiency was observed. In other words, the to test the intermediates to help to understand the photocat-
TiO2 –SiC structured photocatlysts prepared in present study have alytic reactions. For this purpose, the intermediate 4-ABS solutions
manifested robust structural stability and durability for photocata- treated by SiC foam, TiO2 nanoparticles and structured TiO2 –SiC
lysis experiments (Section 3.3). photocatalyst (TSM-2) were subjected to LC–MS measurements
The photocatalytic activities of the SiC foam supports, TiO2 when the same 4-ABS concentration of 70 mg/L was reached (The
nanoparticles and TSM-2 were evaluated by taking 4-ABS as a detailed results of mass spectrometry is shown in the electronic
model contaminant, as shown in Fig. 6. In comparison to direct supplementary information). It was interesting to note that when
photolysis of 4-ABS, the SiC foam supports, TiO2 nanoparticles and the catalyst was SiC foam, an intermediate product with molecular
TSM-2 can all effectively degrade 4-ABS within 60 h. The degra- weight of 156 was detected (see Fig. S1). This intermediate should
dation rate of TSM-2, TiO2 and SiC foam were 100%, 62.8% and be the dehydroxylization product of 4-ABS after the OH group
30.9%, respectively. It was obvious that TSM-2, which was the com- was dehydrolized off. However, when the catalysts were TiO2 and
plex of SiC and TiO2 , exhibited higher photocatalytic activity than TSM, no intermediate product was found during the photocatalysis
TiO2 nanoparticles and the SiC foam supports. The photocatalytic process (see Fig. S2). This can be ascribed to the ability of TiO2 that
efficiency of TSM-2 is about 37% higher than the best efficiency can directly mineralize 4-ABS into small molecular, such as CO2 ,
of TiO2 nanoparticles in a suspension system as was optimized in NOx and H2 O. As the TSM catalysts were coated with TiO2 , they
our preliminary experiments. This demonstrated that the TiO2 –SiC can also directly mineralize 4-ABS to small molecular. Therefore,
structured photocatalyst had not only realized the immobilization no intermediate organic product was detected (see Fig. S3).
of TiO2 , but also improved the photocatalytic activity. The SiC foam
support used in this work was a p-type semiconductor that has
3.3. Effect of coating thickness on the photocatalytic activity

It was confirmed in the above section that the structured

TiO2 –SiC photocatalyst exhibited higher photocatalytic activity
than TiO2 nanoparticles and SiC foam supports. To optimize the
catalytic activity of the structured photocatalyst, TSM samples with
the loading amount of TiO2 in the turn of TSM-1 < TSM-2 < TSM-3
were prepared and their photocatalytic efficiencies in degradation
of 4-ABS were measured, as shown in Fig. 7. TSM-2 and TSM-1
showed the highest and lowest photocatalytic efficiencies, respec-
tively. In the first 6 h, the degradation efficiency of TSM-3 was
almost equal to that of TSM-2. But TSM-2 was more effective than
TSM-3 when the reaction was proceeded further. The low efficiency
of TSM-1 can be attributed to its smallest coating thickness of TiO2 ,
which did not fully cover the SiC foam support, so that did not
provide enough active sites for the photocatalytic degradation of 4-
ABS. However, besides the amount of active component, the coating
Fig. 5. Photocatalytic efficiencies of the TiO2 –SiC photocatalyst (TSL) in ten cycles thickness, i.e. the exposure rate of TiO2 was also important to the
of reusing. degradation efficiency. We assumed that the best photocatalytic
200 D. Hao et al. / Applied Catalysis B: Environmental 144 (2014) 196–202

Fig. 7. Photocatalytic efficiencies of TiO2 –SiC photocatalysts with different TiO2 Fig. 8. Photocatalytic efficiencies of the photocatalysts TSS, TSM-2 and TSL.
loadings (The pore diameter of SiC foam is 1.3mm PPI).

efficiency could only be achieved when enough effective active property. In our study, however, we believed that TiO2 coating
components that truly take part in the photocatalytic reaction were thickness, amount of active component and coupling of SiC and
provided. From this point of view, among the prepared TSM sam- TiO2 were more pronounceable to the photocatalytic property.
ples, TSM-2 was believed to fulfill best to this criterion, i.e. the
optimum number of active sites had been supplied. For TSM-3, even 3.5. The synergistic photocatalytic effect of coupled TiO2 –SiC
though more TiO2 was loaded, the severe overlapping of the TiO2 semiconductor
nanoparticles might have reduced the number of active sites. In
addition, the over loading of TiO2 nanoparticles might have also Coupling of semiconductors is one of the important ways to
reduced the synergistic photocatalytic effect between the SiC foam improve the photocatalytic efficiency. Heterojunctions between SiC
support and TiO2 coating as the charge transfer was prohibited. and TiO2 have been proposed in a few works on nano-TiO2 coated
micrometer-sized SiC particles to account for the better photocat-
3.4. Effect of pore size of SiC foams on the photocatalytic activity alytic efficiency [24,28]. As shown in Fig. 3(c), the micrometer-sized
SiC grains are surrounded by TiO2 nanoparticles. That means that
A higher specific surface area of the photocatalyst may favorite TiO2 –SiC Heterojunctions might have also been built by immobi-
more adsorption of the organics onto the surface, so that to enable lization of TiO2 nanoparticles on SiC foam support. As can be seen
a more rapid photocatalytic reaction. In addition, the amount of from the UV-visible light spectra (Fig. S4), the UV light can suffi-
TiO2 exposed to UV light irradiation will also influence the pho- ciently penetrate the TiO2 coating and reach the SiC support. This
tocatalytic efficiency [20]. In our research, as the pore size of the means that both the TiO2 coating and SiC support can be excited
SiC foams will affect both the specific surface area and exposing by UV light irradiation and formed coupled semiconductor in the
rate of the photocatalyst to the UV light, the photocatalytic effi- interface.
ciencies of the structured photocatalysts with different pore sizes Fig. 9 schematically illustrates the flat band potentials of the
were studied. The initial pore sizes of the SiC foam for TSS, TSM-2 valence and conduction bands at pH 1 (versus the normal hydro-
and TSL were 1.0, 1.3 and 2.5 mm, respectively. The surface areas gen electrode (NHE)) of SiC and TiO2 and the diagram of charge
of the bare SiC foam supports for these samples were estimated to carrier transfer between TiO2 and SiC. As we can see, the conduc-
be 2.112, 1.625 and 0.845 m2 , respectively. The surface area was tion band of SiC is more negative than that of TiO2 . Meanwhile, the
calculated by the following equation as was proposed by Xu et al. valence band of TiO2 is more positive than that of SiC. When SiC
[27]. and TiO2 are excited by UV light, the electrons that get to the SiC
 √ 
8.002 1 − 0.833 1 − ε
avs = √
dp 1 − ε
Where ε is porosity, %, dp is pore diameter, m, and ˛S is sur-
face area of per unit volume, m2 /m3 . The TiO2 loading of these
three photocatalysts was the same, namely 0.5 g per flat ring. That
means that the coating thickness of TiO2 would be in the turn of
TSS < TSM-2 < TSL. In other words, the foams with smaller pores
provided higher surface area and thinner TiO2 coating layer, which
in turn supplied more active TiO2 and also possibly more significant
synergistic effect between the SiC and TiO2 coatings for photocat-
alytic reaction. As shown in Fig. 8, the photocatalytic activities of
these three photocatalysts were in the turn of TSS > TSM-2 > TSL,
consisting with our above assumptions. Regarding the light absorp-
tion and transmission, our results showed an opposite tendency to
that of Kouamé et al. [20], in which the bigger the pore size was, the
higher the catalytic efficiency was obtained. The authors claimed
that the higher light transmisson for the TiO2 –SiC foam photocata-
lyst with larger pore size had accounted for its better photocatalytic Fig. 9. Diagram of electron transfer of the coupled TiO2 –SiC semiconductor.
 D. Hao et al. / Applied Catalysis B: Environmental 144 (2014) 196–202 201

have synergetic effect with TiO2 coating has played a crucial role on
the photocatalytic property of the composite. As we have carefully
controlled the TiO2 coating on different SiC foam supports with by
same thickness and loading amount, the influence of the physical
and chemical properties of the TiO2 coatings can therefore be min-
imized, which ensured that the measured different photocatalytic
properties can be attributed to the effect of the different substrates.
In addition, from the surface photovoltage spectra (SPS) of the
SiC–TiO2 composites made of dense flat composite but with differ-
ent types of semiconductivity, we can also clearly observe stronger
SPS response in the p-type SiC supported TiO2 than the n-type SiC
supported sample. This further demonstrated that the p-type SiC
support must have a synergetic effect with the n-type TiO2 coat-
ing in enhancing the photocatalytic property of the composite. The
relevant study has been reported in another paper [36].

Fig. 10. The SPS spectra of SiC support and TiO2 –SiC.
4. Conclusion

conduction band will transfer from SiC to TiO2 . At the meanwhile, The structured TiO2 –SiC photocatalysts prepared by a compos-
the holes will transfer from the valence band of TiO2 to that of SiC. ite sol–gel method exhibited efficient photocatalytic degradation of
This is called classical charge transfer mechanism. Keller and Garin 4-ABS. The TiO2 coating was uniform and bonded to the SiC foam
[21] studied the coupling effect of SiC and TiO2 in a ternary system support firmly as was confirmed by recycling tests. The TiO2 –SiC
[21]. Other coupled semiconductors, such as WO3 –TiO2 , CdS–TiO2 , showed advantageous photocatalytic performance as compared to
SnO2 –TiO2 , and so on, have also been investigated based on pow- TiO2 nanoparticles. The photocatalytic activity was highly depend-
dery samples [29–31]. In this study we demonstrated that coupling ent on the coating thickness of TiO2 and pore sizes of the SiC foam
of SiC foam support and TiO2 coatings might have also led to charge supports. We believe that the coupling of the p-type semiconduc-
transfer between them during photocatalysis and as a result high tive SiC foam supports with the n-type TiO2 coating might have
photocatalytic activity as compared to TiO2 nanoparticles. played important role on the photocatalytic reactions. This study
Surface photovoltage spectroscopy (SPS) is a powerful tool also provides a solution for enhancing the photocatalytic activity
for characterization of the surface state. In this study we cannot of structured photocatalyst exited by visible light.
directly measure the surface photovoltage of the foam samples.
Instead, SiC bulks with the dimension of 20 mm × 10 mm × 1 mm
Acknowledgement
were prepared by the same method as that for SiC foam. The SiC
bulks were then coated with the same thicknesses of TiO2 as that for
This research is supported by the National Key Technology
TSM-1, TSM-2 and TSM-3, respectively. The SPS spectra of the SiC
R&D Program of China with Grant No. 2011BAE03B07. The authors
bulk support and TiO2 –SiC composites with different TiO2 loadings
would also like to thank Prof. Dejun Wang and Mr. Liping Chen for
were compared in Fig. 10.
their help with the SPS experiments.
In the UV region (wavelength <400 nm), all samples can be
excited. In comparison to the SiC support, the SPS spectrum of
TiO2 –SiC was first enhanced by increasing the TiO2 loading. How- Appendix A. Supplementary data
ever, further increasing the thickness of TiO2 coating layer resulted
in decreased intensity of the SPS spectrum. As SPS response peak Supplementary data associated with this article can be
reflects the net charge accumulated on the materials surface found, in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
[32,33], the intensity change of the SPS spectra can be directly apcatb.2013.07.016.
linked to the efficiency of charge transfer and separation. From
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