Condensed Matter & Materials Science Seminar

Thursday, October 24th, 2013

Daniel Burrill
Department of Physics, UVM

"A DFT Study on Molybdenum-Doped Tungsten Trioxide and the Implications for Photocatalysis"

Photocatalysis is the process by which a photoreaction is aided through the use of a suitable catalyst. During the photocatalysis of water three properties of the catalyst are crucial: the band gap and the energies of the valence and conduction band edges. To make use of sunlight, a material with an appropriate band gap such as tungsten trioxide is used as a catalyst. However, the band edges for this material are not optimal to facilitate the redox reaction of water. Introducing suitable dopants gives greater control over tuning these properties to increase photocatalytic efficiency. In this presentation I will discuss preliminary results of substitutional doping of Mo into the bulk WO3 as studied through density functional theory.