The role of Cu and film thickness on the photocatalytic activity of mesoporous spin coated TiO₂ films

. The photocatalytic degradation of stearic acid was used as a measure of photocatalytic activity for catalysts spin coated from a sol-gel onto glass with 0, 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2.5 and 5 wt% copper introduced into the catalyst lattice before gelation. The effects of spin coating speed on film thickness, structure and band gap was studied and the nature of the copper incorporated into the films examined with XPS and XANES measurements