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My Research The science of photocatalysis has been around for years. Many photocatalysts occur naturally, with the most common occurring in plants for photosynthesis. In recent years, the use of semiconductors as photocatalysts has gained interest due to their unique structural properties. However, many of these semiconductor materials have significant disadvantages that prevent them for being used widely in industry, such as a high energy band gap and a structure that prevents a high quantum yield (reaction rate/number of photons absorbed). In this research, ETS-10 will be investigated, due to its potential to overcome these disadvantages of semiconductors, to develop a unique photocatalyst that can be used in industry for such applications as reduction of VOCs. ETS-10 is a microporous titanosilicate that was discovered in 1989 by Engelhard Corporation and is composed of octahedral chains of TiO6 connected to tetrahedral SiO4. These chains then stack perpendicular to each other to form a large-pore(12-ring), three-dimensional channel structure with a stoichiometry of (Na, K)2TiSi5O13.. ETS-10 will be studied using an array of experimental and computational methods, such as an in-situ DRIFT cell, UV/vis diffuse reflectance, XRD, N2 adsorption, flow reactor studies and DFT calculations, to accomplish several objectives. The first objective is to optimize the ETS-10 structure in order to lower the band gap energy and increase quantum yield. The second will be to use in-situ DRIFT measurements to develop reaction mechanisms for the decomposition of methanol and ethanol in the pores of ETS-10 and compare them to the already published studies on TiO2. The last objective will be to use the best ETS-10 samples that have been optimized structurally in flow reactor studies. All of these objectives will be closely tied to molecular modeling efforts that will be used to guide experiments and help explain the experimental results.
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Maria M. Martinez-Inesta |
