Gasochromic Effect in Nanocrystalline TiO_{2} Thin Films Doped with Ta and Pd

Recently, crystalline thin films with gasochromic properties have attracted great interest because of wide application possibility. Such layers can be used as optically switchable coatings like displays, smart windows or optical hydrogen sensor, which is one of the alternative sources of energy [1–4]. Literature reports that the gasochromic properties can be found in materials based on tungsten oxide, vanadium oxide and magnesium oxide coated with very thin layer of catalyst such as platinum or palladium [2–7]. However, there were also few research works concentrated on gasochromic films consisting of pure titanium oxide coated Pd catalyst film. Novel achievement presented in this work was to obtain gasochromic effect in thin nanocrystalline layers prepared from TiO2 doped by palladium and tantalum.