Cu-Doped TiO2: Visible Light Assisted Photocatalytic Antimicrobial Activity

By Snehamol Mathew, Priyanka Ganguly, S. Rhatigan, V. Kumaravel, C. Byrne, S. Hinder, J. Bartlett, M. Nolan, S. Pillai. Applied Sciences, 2018

229 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Surface contamination by microbes is a major public health concern. A damp environment is one of potential sources for microbe proliferation. Smart photocatalytic coatings on building surfaces using semiconductors like titania (TiO2) can effectively curb this growing threat. Metal-doped titania in anatase phase has been proven as a promising candidate for energy and environmental applications. In this present work, the antimicrobial efficacy of copper (Cu)-doped TiO2 (Cu-TiO2) was evaluated against Escherichia coli (Gram-negative) and Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive) under visible light irradiation. Doping of a minute fraction of Cu (0.5 mol %) in TiO2 was carried out via sol-gel technique. Cu-TiO2 further calcined at various temperatures (in the range of 500–700 °C) to evaluate the thermal stability of TiO2 anatase phase. The physico-chemical properties of the samples were characterized through X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy (XPS) and UV–visible spectroscopy techniques. XRD results revealed that the anatase phase of TiO2 was maintained well, up to 650 °C, by the Cu dopant. UV–vis results suggested that the visible light absorption property of Cu-TiO2 was enhanced and the band gap is reduced to 2.8 eV. Density functional theory (DFT) studies emphasize the introduction of Cu+ and Cu2+ ions by replacing Ti4+ ions in the TiO2 lattice, creating oxygen vacancies. These further promoted the photocatalytic efficiency. A significantly high bacterial inactivation (99.9999%) was attained in 30 min of visible light irradiation by Cu-TiO2.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c6efb750f6f4101965e62b1bc326a6df404d4fb

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In Materials Chemistry

1. S. Pillai
2. C. Byrne
3. S. Hinder
4. M. Nolan

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. S. Pillai
2. C. Byrne
3. S. Hinder
4. M. Nolan

Citations in the corpus

• Effect of Cu doping on the anatase-to-rutile phase transition in TiO2 photocatalysts: Theory and experiments (2019, background): “The active modes for anatase are A1g, 2B1g and 3 Eg at 147, 197, 396, 516 and 638 cm [10].”