Abstract
High specific surface area three-dimensional pine tree-like hierarchical TiO2 nanotube array films loaded with Ag nanoparticles were successfully prepared by one-step hydrothermal reaction combining with simple and feasible magnetron sputtering. The composite Ag/TiO2-branched nanotube arrays show outstanding photocatalytic property, which is attributed to the boost of plasmonic enhancement carrier generation and separation, higher specific surface area, higher organic pollutant absorption, faster charge transport, and superior light-harvesting efficiency for efficient charge collection. The work provides a cost-effective and flexible pathway to develop high-performance photocatalyst or optoelectronic devices.
Highlights
The cross-sectional Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images show that the prepared three-dimensional pine tree-like hierarchical TiO2 nanotube arrays composing of a vertically oriented nanotube trunk with a length of approximately 5 μm grafted with large amounts of short branches with lengths of about 300 nm were directly grown on Fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate by a simple one-step hydrothermal method
The magnified image shows the diameter of the branch at approximately 50 nm. This hierarchical architecture with large specific surface area can enhance the absorption of dye molecules and effectively improve charge transport by a direct transport path thereby may be improving the photocatalytic activity of the TiO2
All the results show that the three-dimensional pine tree-like hierarchical anatase TiO2 nanotube array films were successfully fabricated
Summary
In spite of nearly half a century investigations, since Fujishima and Honda discovered the photocatalytic water splitting on TiO2 electrodes in 1972 [1], TiO2 still remains to be intensively investigated as semiconductor photocatalyst owing to its important applications in phtocatalysis [2,3,4,5,6,7], photoelectrochemical water splitting [8,9,10,11,12], solar cell [13,14,15,16], and sensors [17, 18], because of its excellent chemical stability, abundance, and low cost. The photocatalytic activities of TiO2 are restricted by its low photocatalytic sensitivity in the UV region and rapid recombination of photogenerated electron and hole pairs [19]. Xu et al Nanoscale Research Letters (2017) 12:54 method for enhancing the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 owing to the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) effect of metal NPs [29,30,31,32,33]. Ag is an optimal choice due to the Ag NPs’ LSPR position close to the exciton absorption of TiO2; on the other hand, silver is most suitable for industrial applications owing to its easy preparation and low cost. The Ag NPs decorated on the surface of TiO2 could act as an electron trap center to effectively prevent electron-hole recombination and enhance the photocatalytic activity
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