• journal_title：European Journal of Mineralogy
• Contributor：Zemin Luo ; Anhuai Lu ; Yan Li ; Wei Zhuang ; Jing Wu ; Shan Qin ; Changqiu Wang
• Publisher：E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Science Publishers
• Date：2012-
• Format：text/html
• Language：en
• Identifier：10.1127/0935-1221/2012/0024-2182
• journal_abbrev：Eur J Mineral
• issn：0935-1221
• volume：24
• issue：3
• firstpage：551
• section：Articles

Like synthetic V-doped TiO₂, natural semiconducting V-bearing rutile (TiO₂) has potential capability for visible-light absorption. The traditional modification for the synthetic V-doped TiO₂ was to enhance the sample’s visible-light absorption by increasing the doping concentration. This paper demonstrates that the visible-light absorption of natural rutile with low V doping concentration (1.0 mol%) is significantly enhanced simply through annealing under argon. In the visible-light region of 400–750 nm, the integral absorbance of rutile treated at 1173 K increased by around 63 % compared to untreated rutile. Electronic paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurements indicated that argon annealing induced a substantial increase of V⁴⁺ as an active state of V doping ions for the visible-light absorption. This argon annealing can provide a simple modification method for enhancing the visible-light absorption of V-doped TiO₂.