Diagnostics of Plasma Behavior and TiO2 Properties Based on DBD/TiO2 Hybrid System

Plasma catalysis is gaining increasing interest in environmental and energy applications, such as the destruction of gas pollutants and hydrocarbon conversion. In order to further improve the application of plasma catalysis, it is crucial to understand the fundamental mechanisms, especially the mutual interaction between plasma and catalyst. In this paper, a parallel-plate dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor is developed to investigate the plasma behavior and TiO 2 properties in the plasma/catalytic hybrid system. The introduction of TiO 2 thin film coated on the dielectric improves the discharge intensity, which significantly contributes to the enhancement of reactive species and charges. The energy efficiency of generating ozone in DBD/TiO 2 system has been approximately raised by 38% compared to pure DBD when the applied voltage reaches 13 kV. It is fortunately found that the discharge does not change the crystal structure of the TiO 2 , but the band gap increases from 3.13 to 3.39 eV, which has been proved to enhance the oxidizability of TiO 2 in the degradation of methyl orange experiment under UV light. The FTIR and XPS spectra also demonstrate that N element is doped into the structure of TiO 2 . These results successfully illustrate the plasma behavior and catalyst properties in plasma/catalysis hybrid system and provide reference for the optimization of the plasma catalysis process.