☆ 4.6 Article

Optimal rare-earth (La, Y and Sm) doping conditions and enhanced mechanism for photocatalytic application of ceria nanorods

NANOTECHNOLOGY (2021)

Journal

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Volume 32, Issue 19, Pages -

Publisher

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/abdf90

Keywords

rare-earth elements; doped ceria nanorods; oxygen vacancies; photocatalytic activity

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China [51804088, 52074096]
Science and Technology Department of Guizhou Province, China [[2017]5788, [2018]5781]
Basic Research Program from the Science and Technology Department of Guizhou Province [[2020]1Y219, [2019]1082]
Doctor Funding of Guizhou University [(2017)04, 2019[30]]

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Abstract

The method of morphological tuning or additional cation doping is a potential and simple way to enhance the photocatalytic properties of ceria. In this study, La, Y, and Sm were doped into CeO2 NRs in various concentrations, with 10% doping showing the narrowest band gaps and higher photocatalytic performance. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of CeO2 was mainly attributed to the promotion of oxygen vacancy generation and impeding the recombination of photogenerated carriers by doped RE ions.

Morphological tuning or additional cation doping is one of the potential and simple methods to enhance the photocatalytic properties of ceria, in which rare-earth element doped ceria nanorods (CeO2-RE NRs) are expected to be a promising photocatalyst with high activity. But the optimal doping conditions, including the variety and concentration of RE elements are ambiguous, and the contribution of doped RE ions to the enhancement of photocatalytic activity needs to be further studied. In this work, we doped La, Y and Sm with a wide range of 0%-30% into CeO2 NRs, and investigated the phase, morphology, band gap, oxygen vacancy concentration, PL spectra and photocatalytic activity variation under different doping conditions. All synthesized CeO2-RE NRs possessed a good nanorod morphology except the 15 and 30% Y-doped samples. The energy band gaps of the synthesized samples changed slightly; the 10% CeO2-RE NRs with the narrowest band gaps possessed the higher photocatalytic performance. The most outstanding photocatalyst was found to be the 10% Y-doped CeO2 NRs with a methylene blue photodegradation ratio of 85.59% and rate constant of 0.0134 min(-1), which is particularly associated with a significant higher oxygen vacancy concentration and obviously lower recombination rate of photogenerated e(-)/h(+) pairs. The doped RE ions and the promotion of oxygen vacancy generation impede the recombination of photogenerated carriers, which is proposed as the main reason to enhance the photocatalytic property of CeO2.

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Doping rare earth cations with an additional chemical reduction synergistically weakened the photocatalytic performance of ceria

Junshan Zhang, Xisong Mao, Yuanpei Lan, Junqi Li, Chaoyi Chen, Jian Yang, Wei Zhang, Arun Murali, Li Liu, Qin Wang

Summary: Chemical reducing or rare earth cations (RE) doping were used to enhance the photocatalytic performance of ceria, but surprisingly hindered the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB). The excess oxygen vacancies (OVs) formed in RE-doped ceria reduced the separation efficiency of photo-excited e(-)/h(+). The recombination of e(-)/h(+), promoted by RE dopants and excess OVs, weakened the generation of active species and ultimately weakened the photocatalytic activity of ceria.

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