Facile fabrication of well-dispersed silver nanoparticles loading on TiO2 nanotube arrays by electrodeposition

Abstract

A facile electrodeposition route was adopted to construct well-dispersed silver nanoparticles on TiO2 nanotube arrays which were prepared by anodization method. The morphologies and composition of silver nanoparticles loading on TiO2 nanotube arrays were characterized using field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Methyl orange (MO) solution was utilized as the degradation model to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of the samples under ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation. The results suggested that the metallic Ag particles with uniform size of ~5nm were deposited on the whole tube wall and TiO2 nanotube arrays loaded Ag nanoparticles presented higher photocatalytic activities of 2.5-fold enhancement than pure TiO2 nanotube arrays under UV light irradiation. This approach can provide a convenient route to synthesize various TiO2 nanotube array materials which are loaded by metal particulates with quantum size.