Fabrication of Lattice-Doped TiO2 Nanofibers by Vapor-Phase Growth for Visible Light-Driven N2 Conversion to Ammonia

In the past decades, enormous efforts have been made to synthesize photocatalysts for N2 conversion driven by visible light. However, it is still a major challenge to develop an efficient photocatalyst. In this paper, monodoped and codoped TiO2 nanofibers were fabricated by vapor-phase growth. Vapor-phase implantation of the guest atoms into TiO2 nanofibers may greatly prolong the lifetime of electron–hole pairs. The doped TiO2 nanofibers were demonstrated to be an excellent photocatalyst for nitrogen photofixation under a 300 W Xe-lamp irradiation. The amount of ammonia produced over the Fe, V codoped TiO2 nanofibers reached 14 783 μmol/L·g-cata after irradiation for 2 h. The strategy could be easily extended to prepare other species doped TiO2 nanofibers as high-efficiency photocatalysts.