• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.907-912
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• 2011

Development of visible light responsive photocatalysts is a promising research area to facilitate utilization of solar energy for hydrogen production via photocatalytic water splitting. In this study two groups of samples, nitrogen (N)-doped niobium pentoxide ($Nb_2O_5$) and titanium dioxide ($TiO_2$) ($Nb_2O_5-N$, $HNb_3O_8-N$, $TiO_2-N$) and N-undoped ones ($Nb_2O_5$ and $TiO_2$) were tested. In order to utilize visible light, nitrogen atoms were doped in selected photocatalysts by using urea. A shift of the absorption edges of the Ndoped samples in the visible light region was observed. Under visible light irradiation, N-doped samples were more prominent photocatalytic activities than the N-undoped samples. Specifically, 99.7% of rhodamine B (RhB) was degraded after 60 minutes of visible light irradiation with $TiO_2-N$. Since $TiO_2-N$ shows the highest activity of RhB degradation, it was supposed to generate the highest current response. However, $HNb_3O_8-N$ showed the highest current response ($63.7mA/cm^2$) than $TiO_2-N$. More interestingly, when we compare the hydrogen production, $Nb_2O_5-N$ produced $19.4{\mu}mol/h$ of hydrogen.