Photocatalytic coatings have the potential to contribute to the purification of water via an advanced oxidation process (AOP) [1]. A commonly used method for analyzing the mechanism of the photocatalytic performance of a given reactor type is to document the degradation behavior in a solution containing methylene blue. However, since methylene blue is rather unstable, the degradation results should be viewed critically. In this work, the degradation behavior of a test solution with methylene blue on quartz glass surfaces coated with photocatalytic titanium dioxide (TiO 2) of the anatase modification was investigated through a variety of different light sources. The coating was deposited by the reactive pulsed DC magnetron sputtering (MSIP-PVD) method described in [2], while the quartz glasses were coated with a 100 nm thick TiO 2 coating. The same glasses were used for all experiments with TiO 2. In the determination of the degradation rate, additional experiments were performed using pure quartz glass without any coating, which made it possible to examine the influence of different light sources on the degradation rate of methylene blue in general. Three different light sources, namely UV-A, UV-C, and simple fluorescent lamps were used in this study. The concentration of methylene blue was recorded by photo spectrometer in 10-minute increments throughout the experiment and the experiments were performed for 24 hours in all cases.

The use of pulsed dc-sputtering sources for reactive magnetron sputtering with oxygen offers a possibility to suppress the negative effects of target poisoning (such as arcing). This results in a wide process range for the selection of a desired operating point. The control of target poisoning plays a major role in maintaining constant coating properties and affects the stoichiometry of the reactive coating, as well as the coating rate and the economic impact of the coating process. In a hysteresis, the target poisoning during the reactive sputtering of titanium under oxygen addition proceeds nonlinearly. Without the use of a suitable target poisoning control technique, the sputtering process can abruptly change to an unstable state. As a result, variations of stoichiometry can occur during the deposition process. A proven method for maintaining a stable reactive sputtering process is the control of oxygen flow with the input variable target voltage. By determining the typical oxygen hysteresis at constant target power and constant argon flow, an operating point for the control loop is derived. The desired target voltage then serves as the input variable for the control loop of the target poisoning. The controlling technique for target poisoning is a basic requirement for the production of the photolytic active anatase phase of titanium dioxide (TiO2) using reactive magnetron sputtering. The photocatalytic equipment of surfaces with a titanium dioxide coating in the anatase phase can be realized with the reactive pulsed dc magnetron sputter ion plating process (DC-MSIP). The pulsed DC-MSIP process facilitates coating a variety of surfaces at temperatures below 200 °C in an environmentally friendly manner.