Research Article Role of Platinum Deposited on TiO 2 in Photocatalytic Methanol Oxidation and Dehydrogenation Reactions Luma M. Ahmed, 1 Irina Ivanova, 2 Falah H. Hussein, 3 and Detlef W. Bahnemann 2 1 Chemistry Department, College of Science, Karbala University, 56001 Karbala, Iraq 2 Institut f¨ ur Technische Chemie, Leibniz Universit¨ at Hannover, Callin Strasse 3, 30167 Hannover, Germany 3 Chemistry Department, College of Science, University of Babylon, 51002 Hilla, Iraq Correspondence should be addressed to Falah H. Hussein; abohasan hilla@yahoo.com Received 30 November 2013; Revised 4 January 2014; Accepted 5 January 2014; Published 20 February 2014 Academic Editor: Jiaguo Yu Copyright © 2014 Luma M. Ahmed et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Titania modiied nanoparticles have been prepared by the photodeposition method employing platinum particles on the commercially available titanium dioxide (Hombikat UV 100). he properties of the prepared photocatalysts were investigated by means of the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray difraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and UV- visible difuse spectrophotometry (UV-Vis). XRD was employed to determine the crystallographic phase and particle size of both bare and platinised titanium dioxide. he results indicated that the particle size was decreased with the increasing of platinum loading. AFM analysis showed that one particle consists of about 9 to 11 crystals. UV-vis absorbance analysis showed that the absorption edge shited to longer wavelength for 0.5% Pt loading compared with bare titanium dioxide. he photocatalytic activity of pure and Pt-loaded TiO 2 was investigated employing the photocatalytic oxidation and dehydrogenation of methanol. he results of the photocatalytic activity indicate that the platinized titanium dioxide samples are always more active than the corresponding bare TiO 2 for both methanol oxidation and dehydrogenation processes. he loading with various platinum amounts resulted in a signiicant improvement of the photocatalytic activity of TiO 2 . his beneicial efect was attributed to an increased separation of the photogenerated electron-hole charge carriers. 1. Introduction Titanium dioxide is regarded to be one of the most common photocatalysts, having a wide range of properties, such as a strong resistance to chemical and photocorrosion, strong oxidation capability, low operational temperature, low-cost, being and nontoxic [1]. hese properties make TiO 2 an attractive candidate for its utilization as a photocatalyst in the photocatalytic processes. TiO 2 has been extensively studied and demonstrated to be suitable for numerous applications such as, destruction of microorganisms [2–5], inactivation of cancer cells [6, 7], protection of the skin from the sun [8–11], photocatalytic water splitting to produce hydrogen gas [12– 14], manufacture of some drug types [15–17], degradation of toxic organic pollutants in water [18–20], and self-cleaning of glass and ceramic surfaces [21]. Even though TiO 2 is the most used semiconductor material, it exhibits some disad- vantages, such as low surface area and fast recombination rate between the photogenerated charge carriers and the maximum absorption in the ultraviolet light region. Diferent attempts have been performed to improve the eiciency of TiO 2 depressing the recombination process of the photoelectron-hole pairs. Some of them include the modiication of TiO 2 surface with other semiconductors to alter the charge-transfer properties between TiO 2 and the surrounding environment [22, 23], sensitizing TiO 2 with col- ored inorganic or organic compounds improving its optical absorption in the visible light region [24–28], bulk modii- cation by cation and anion doping [29–38], and fabrication of TiO 2 surface from polyhedral to produce hallow TiO 2 Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Photoenergy Volume 2014, Article ID 503516, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/503516