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Published on: March 16, 2018
Better fuels for photocatalytic micromotors: a case study of triethanolamine
Shifang Duan1, Pengzhao Xu1, Wei Wang1
1School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, China. weiwangsz@hit.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Efficient fuels are critical for designing photocatalytic micromotors with high performance. We discover that 0.5 mM of triethanolamine can power TiO2-Pt motors at 35 μm s-1 without producing bubbles, a significant improvement over conventional fuels such as water, H2O2 or hydroquinone. The effectiveness of hole scavengers such as triethanolamine can be generalized to other photocatalytic micromotors containing a heterojunction with an n-type (but not a p-type) semiconductor.
