N-doped TiO2 P25/Cu powder obtained using nitrogen (N2) gas plasma

It has been shown that the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 can be modified by deposition of Cu nanoparticles as well as doping with nitrogen. Typical procedures to induce the doping of titania are based on chemical methods. An interesting alternative is to dope titania by using N2 gas plasma in the presence of a metal. In this work, it is shown that doping of titania Degussa P25, in the presence of copper using N2 gas plasma can induce also the deposition of Cu nanoparticles. This material, known as N-doped TiO2/Cu is characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and UV–Vis diffuse reflectance. Additionally, the photocatalytic activity of the samples was evaluated by monitoring the photodegradation of methylene blue solutions using UV–Vis absorption analysis in the range 250–850 nm. The results show that this methodology of incorporating Cu into titania P25 to obtain N-doped TiO2/Cu increases its photocatalytic activity when low intensity gas plasma is used.