Atomic Layer Deposition of Au-TiO2 inverse opals for the visible light photocatalysis of dyesdegradation

The pollution of waste water due to organic dyes used in the textile and chemical industries is an important environmental issue. Inverse opals (IO) offer a great potential for increasing the efficiency of their degradation by semiconductor photocatalysts such as TiO2 by the synergy of high specific surface and photonic crystal properties [1]. Doping TiO2 with gold nanoparticles is another possible strategy to enhance its photocatalytic activity by increasing its optical absorption in the visible range [2].This work reports the synthesis of Au-TiO 2 IO films by Atomic Layer Deposition and the study of their visible-light photocatalytic activity for the degradation of methylene blue in water…