Article: Ahsan, SS; Gumus, A; Erickson, D; (2016) “Stacked Waveguide Reactors with Gradient Embedded Scatterers for High-Capacity Water Cleaning”, Optics Express, 23 (24): A1664-A1671
Abstract: We present a compact water-cleaning reactor with stacked layers of waveguides containing gradient patterns of optical scatterers that enable uniform light distribution and augmented water-cleaning rates.
Previous photocatalytic reactors using immersion, external, or distributive lamps suffer from poor light distribution that impedes scalability. Here, we use an external UV-source to direct photons into stacked waveguide reactors where we scatter the photons uniformly over the length of the waveguide to thin films of TiO2-catalysts. We also show 4.5 times improvement in activity over uniform scatterer designs, demonstrate a degradation of 67% of the organic dye, and characterize the degradation rate constant. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America
Funding Acknowledgement: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Science (DOE) [DE-SC0003935]; National Science Foundation (NSF) [ECS-0335765]; Nanobiotechnology Center (NBTC), an STC Program of the National Science Foundation [ECS-9876771]
Funding Text: This work was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Science (DOE) under Grant DE-SC0003935. This work was performed in part at the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a member of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Grant ECS-0335765). The authors appreciate access and the use of the facilities of the Nanobiotechnology Center (NBTC), an STC Program of the National Science Foundation under Agreement No. ECS-9876771.