2024-04-18 06:30:55
If the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) is well known, their addition to paints also presents drawbacks which may limit their interest. A team of researchers has developed doped TiO2-NPs that do not reduce the chemical stability of paint and whose photocatalysis reaction is triggered by sunlight.
TiO nanoparticles2 have the ability to self-clean when irradiated by UV light. In practice, however, this photocatalytic activity is not very effective for outdoor use, since it requires intense UV irradiation.
This is the main objective of the work carried out by the team of Austrian (TU Wien) and Italian (Università Politecnica delle Marche) researchers: to modify these nanoparticles so that they can be used in daylight.
TIO nanoparticles2 doped, produced from waste!
In catalysis, the most commonly used dopants are generally precious metals (gold, platinum, palladium, etc.) whose cost is likely to penalize the industrialization of self-cleaning paints.
Instead, the researchers propose using non-metallic and very common chemical elements, since they are phosphorus, nitrogen and carbon (PNC doping). But beyond the dopants used, the entire “synthesis philosophy” is radically different, since all of the materials used are extracted from waste!
“To obtain phosphorus, nitrogen and carbon, we used dried olive leaves, and the titanium for the titanium oxide nanoparticles was obtained from metal waste, which is normally thrown away,” explain Günther Rupprechter, from the Institute of Materials Chemistry (TU Wien) in and Press release.
Effective decontamination that preserves the paint
What regarding efficiency in terms of depollution? In the paper published in ACS Catalysisthe researchers demonstrate that once added to polymer-based paints, these nanoparticles doped with PNC make it possible to eliminate 96% of the pollutants adsorbed on the surface, by simple exposure to daylight.
Furthermore, unlike the use of TiO nanoparticles2 not doped, the researchers did not observe any degradation of the paint. The excellent stability of paints added with these nanoparticles from waste, which was confirmed by surface analysis (micro-FTIR), therefore bodes well and should lead to new experiments with a view to commercialization.
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#Selfcleaning #paints #sunlight