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.