Oxygen Vacancy Mediated Band-Gap Engineering via B-Doping for Enhancing Z-Scheme A-TiO2/R-TiO2 Heterojunction Photocatalytic Performance

Fabrication of Z-scheme heterojunction photocatalysts is an ideal strategy for solving environmental problems by providing inexhaustible solar energy. A direct Z-scheme anatase TiO2/rutile TiO2 heterojunction photocatalyst was prepared using a facile B-doping strategy. The band structure and oxygen-vacancy content can be successfully tailored by controlling the amount of B-dopant. The photocatalytic performance was enhanced via the Z-scheme transfer path formed between the B doped anatase-TiO2 and rutile-TiO2, optimized band structure with markedly positively shifted band potentials, and the synergistically-mediated oxygen vacancy contents. Moreover, the optimization study indicated that 10% B-doping with the R-TiO2 to A-TiO2 weight ratio of 0.04 could achieve the highest photocatalytic performance. This work may provide an effective approach to synthesize nonmetal-doped semiconductor photocatalysts with tunable-energy structures and promote the efficiency of charge separation.