Pt/Pt 4+-TiO2 photocatalyst prepared by a modified sol-gel process was investigated by X-ray diffraction, UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, time-resolved photoconductivity and terephthalic acid fluorescence probing. The photocatalytic activities of catalysts were evaluated by using ethylene oxidation studies under visible light irradiation（λ>450 nm） from 40 to 62 ℃. It is found that the platinum doping in titania caused significant absorption shift to the visible region and the surface recombination of photogenerated carriers was inhibited. The results show that ethylene was not converted on conventional TiO2 while the conversion was 90% and the complete mineralization was achieved over Pt-Pt 4+/TiO2 at 62 ℃ in our experiment. Besides the exponential increase of thermalcatalytic activity, pure photocatalytic activity of the planitized sample enhanced linearly with the increase of temperature.
A TiO2 modified with PtⅣ chloride was investigated by diffuse reflectance UV-Vis spectra（DRS）,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy（XPS）, surface photovoltage spectroscopy（SPS） and electric field-induced surface photovoltage spectroscopy（EFISPS）.XPS showed that a Ti-O-PtⅣClx surface complex between PtⅣ chloride and TiO2 appears to be responsible for visible light absorption.An electron transfer from the surface-complexed PtⅣClx to the conduction band of TiO2 upon absorbing visible light was confirmed by SPS and EFISPS.
The InVO4-TiO2 nano-crystalline photocatalyst was prepared by sol-gel method and characterized by DRS, FTIR, Raman and XRD. The photocatalytic activities of the prepared sample were investigated by photocatalytic degradation of ethylene in the gaseous phase under visible light irradiation (λ>450 nm). The results indicate that both of pure TiO2 and InVO4 or their simple mixture show no photocatalytic activities for degradation of ethylene under visible light irradiation. However, as-synthesized InVO4-TiO2 catalyzes the degradation of ethylene into CO2 under visible light irradiation. In addition, the interaction between InVO4 and TiO2 results in some structural distortion to all the crystal forms of TiO2 in as-synthesized catalyst InVO4-TiO2.
