Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SF5-P025
PREPARATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF Zn-DOPED TIO2 THIN
FILMS FOR PHOTOCATALYTIC APPLICATIONS
Laura Jazmín Velazquez Yedra 1,2 , Saúl Romero Hernandez 1 , Victor Hugo Castrejon Sanchez 2 ,
Luis Escobar Alarcon 1
1 Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares (ININ), Ciencias Basicas, Mexico. 2 Tecnológico
de Estudios Superiores de Jocotitlán, Ingenieria en materiales, Mexico.
Emergent contaminants, comprise a wide variety of chemical and
pharmaceutical compounds, personal care products and industrial additives.
Some of them have been detected in water supply sources, underground water
or even in tap water becoming a pollution problem it is important to mention
that conventional wastewater treatments are not designed to eliminate these
kind of pollutants. In recent years, Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOP) have
proven to be an effective way for their degradation. Among the AOP’s one of the
most used is the heterogeneous photocatalysis which appears as an emergent
technology for the degradation of several organic pollutants. Semiconductors
such as TiO 2 , ZnO, CuO, MgO, WO 3 and CdS have been employed as
photocatalysts with good photocatalytic activity. Among these, TiO 2 is widely
used due to its physicochemical properties and non-toxicity. Over the last years,
ZnO appears as a competitor of TiO 2 for wastewater treatment exhibiting in
some cases better photocatalytic activity, especially on dye-polluted aqueous
solutions.
Zn-doped TiO 2 thin films were prepared by a hybrid system combining plasmas
produced Magnetron Sputtering and a Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD). In order
to obtain different amounts of Zn, from 0.3 to 2.5 at. %, the laser fluence was
varied from 1.2 to 4.6 J / cm 2 . Raman spectroscopy was used to determine the
crystalline structure of the films revealing the formation of a mixture of phases
(Anatase/ Rutile) whose ration depend on the Zn content. The optical properties
were determined by UV-Vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence
measurements. The results showed that incorporation of Zn has influence on
the band gap and the electron-hole recombination rate. The photocatalytic
activity of Zn-doped TiO 2 thin films was evaluated in the degradation of the
methylene blue dye with good results.