| Abstract
| - Thin films of various metal oxides were prepared on glass substrates by a wet process todetermine their photocatalytic ability to decompose adsorbed dye and to evaluate theirphotoinduced hydrophilicity under UV illumination. The metal oxides used in this studyare classified into four categories based on their behavior over the two photochemicalreaction: (1) active in both photocatalytic oxidation and photoinduced hydrophilicity (TiO2,SnO2, ZnO); (2) only active in photocatalytic oxidation (SrTiO3); (3) only active in photoinducedhydrophilicity (WO3, V2O5); (4) and inactive over both processes (CeO2, CuO, MoO3, Fe2O3,Cr2O3, In2O3). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed that oxygen defect sites wereproduced by Ar+ bombardment on the surface of metal oxides, showing photoinducedhydrophilicity. These results indicate that photoinduced hydrophilicity is not induced bythe photocatalytic oxidation of organic compounds adsorbed on the surface, but is based onstructural changes of the metal oxide surfaces.
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