Ma Xinguo

First-principles study on the synergistic effects of codoped anatase TiO2 photocatalysts codoped with N/V or C/Cr

An effective compensated codoping approach is described to modify the photoelectrochemical properties of anatase TiO2 by doping with nonmetals (N or C) and transition metals (V or Cr) impurities. Here, compensated codoped TiO2 systems are constructed with different dopant species and sources, and then their dopant formation energies and electronic structures are performed to study the stability and visible-light photoactivity by first-principles plane-wave ultrasoft pseudopotential calculations, respectively. The calculated results demonstrate that the codoping with transition metals facilitates the enhancement of the concentration of p-type dopants (N and C) in a host lattice. Especially, compensated codoping not only reduces the energy gap, to enhance the optical absorption, and eliminate the local trapping, to improve carrier mobility and conversion efficiency, but it also keeps the oxidation-reduction potential of the conduction band edge. These results are conducive to the understanding of the synergistic mechanism of the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 that is enhanced by codoping.

Effect of relaxation on the energetics and electronic structure of clean Ag3PO4(111) surface

The effect of relaxation on the energetics and electronic structure of clean Ag3PO4(111) surface has been studied, carried out using first-principles density functional theory (DFT) incorporating the GGA+U formalism. After atomic relaxation of the Ag3PO4(111) surface, it is found that O atoms are exposed to the outermost surface, due to an inward displacement of more than 0.06 nm for the two threefold-coordinated Ag atoms and an outward displacement of about 0.004 nm for three O atoms in the sublayer. The atomic relaxations result in a large transfer of surface charges from the outermost layer to the inner layer, and the surface bonds have a rehybridization, which makes the covalence increase and thus causes the surface bonds to shorten. The calculated energy band structures and density of states of the Ag3PO4(111) surface present that the atomic relaxation narrows the valence band width 0.15 eV and increases the band gap width 0.26 eV. Meantime, the two surface peaks for the unrelaxed structure disappear at the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band after the relaxed structure, which induces the transformation from a metallic to a semi-conducting characteristic.