Sulphuric acid and Pt treatment of the photocatalytically active titanium dioxide

The study focuses on preparation, surface sites characterization and catalytic activity testing of pure (TiO2), sulfated (TiO2-S), loaded with 1 wt% Pt (TiO2-Pt) and platinized/sulfated (TiO2-Pt-S) high surface area anatase TiO2 (100% anatase, 340 m2/g). Sulfation was performed in 4 M H2SO4 solution and was not followed by a high temperature calcination. TEM images reveal the formation of a 3 Å amorphous layer over TiO2 and TiO2-Pt surface after their sulfation. Infrared spectrum of TiO2-S contains additional absorption bands at 1235, 1333 and 1378 cm−1 that are assigned to Sdouble bond; length as m-dashO stretch and distorted adsorbed image vibrations. Low temperature CO adsorption and organic species adsorption from heptane solutions was performed for characterization of surface sites. TiO2-S showed 3–5 cm−1 shift of adsorbed CO absorption band compared to initial TiO2. The quantity of adsorbed CO increased by a factor of 1.5 for TiO2-S indicating the increase of the quantity of surface Lewis sites. Sulfation also resulted in disappearance of OH groups having absorption band at 3690 cm−1 that was attributed to substitution by monodentate and bidentate sulfates. Four bases and two acids with different pK were used as probes in solution titration revealing that the quantity of different acid sites in TiO2-S increases 1.07–2.17 times. Unexpectedly the quantity of acid and base sites in TiO2-Pt-S decreases relatively to other catalysts studied.