Studies on interstitial carbon doping from a Ti precursor in a hierarchical TiO nanostructured photoanode by a single step hydrothermal route.

Carbon doping from a Ti precursor in TiO synthesized by a hydrothermal method was studied. The structural, optical and morphological study of the deposited material was carried out using X-ray diffraction, UV-vis spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy characterization techniques. The elemental composition of the TiO deposited with different precursor concentrations was studied using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and electron dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The amount of elemental carbon in the TiO matrix is found to be increased as the Ti precursor concentration is increased, which strengthens the proposed idea of carbon doping a Ti precursor.