Synthesis, characterization and computational study of nitrogen-doped CeO2nanoparticles with visible-light activity

Abstract

Nitrogen-doped CeO₂nanoparticles were synthesized through a wet-chemical route. Nitrogen has been successfully incorporated into CeO₂nanoparticles and the nitrogen-doping level was also successfully controlled. The optical properties due to the different N-doping levels in CeO₂nanoparticles were characterized by UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), which showed a visible-light absorbance shift. The resulting nanoparticles show enhanced visible-light sensitivity and photocatalytic activity compared to undoped CeO₂nanoparticles. DFT calculations were performed to explore the effect of nitrogen doping versusoxygen vacancies. The calculations show that the change of the electronic structure upon N-doping CeO₂ is quite different from that of N-doped TiO₂, which has been studied extensively.