Facile route to fabricate carbon-doped TiO nanoparticles and its mechanism of enhanced visible light photocatalytic activity.

High-efficiency photocatalysis requires wide photoresponse range and effective separation of photogenerated charges to fully utilize solar energy. Exploring the simple and cheap methods to synthesize efficient photocatalysts is still a challenging issue. Herein, we report a facile and simple room-temperature hydrolysis method using glucose as carbon source to prepare visible light-active C-doped TiO photocatalyst. This approach features low-cost, reliable, and easily upscalable. It is found that C atoms have been incorporated into the interstitial position of anatase TiO lattice and distributed homogeneously throughout the surface of TiO nanoparticles. The appropriate C doping can greatly improve the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs in C-doped TiO. The C-doped TiO samples exhibit enhanced photocatalytic activity with the degradation efficiency under UV and visible light irradiation, which is much faster than that of pure TiO. The mechanism of the enhanced photocatalytic activity is discussed in detail, which is confirmed by using different scavengers. The work provides a simple and useful way to prepare C-doped wide-gap semiconductors with enhanced photocatalytic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]