Abstract
A relatively new approach to the design of photocatalytic and gas sensing materials is to use the shape-controlled nanocrystals with well-defined facets exposed to light or gas molecules. An abrupt increase in a number of papers on the synthesis and characterization of metal oxide semiconductors such as a TiO2, α-Fe2O3, Cu2O of low-dimensionality, applied to surface-controlled photocatalysis and gas sensing, has been recently observed. The aim of this paper is to review the work performed in this field of research. Here, the focus is on the mechanism and processes that affect the growth of nanocrystals, their morphological, electrical, and optical properties and finally their photocatalytic as well as gas sensing performance.
Highlights
Inorganic single crystals of metal oxides with highly reactive surfaces play a important role in photocatalysis [1,2,3,4,5,6], photoelectrochemistry including hydrogen generation by water splitting [7] and, quite recently, gas sensors [8,9,10,11,12,13,14]
Since 2008, when Yang et al [25] published the results on micrometer sized, well-defined TiO2 single crystals with a high percentage of reactive facets, one can observe a dramatically increased number of papers devoted to facet engineering of surface and interface design, especially in the application to photocatalytic materials [26,27,28]
Single crystals are usually terminated with the low Miller index facets that allow minimizing their surface energy
Summary
Inorganic single crystals of metal oxides with highly reactive surfaces play a important role in photocatalysis [1,2,3,4,5,6], photoelectrochemistry including hydrogen generation by water splitting [7] and, quite recently, gas sensors [8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. Wulff theorem [29] predicts the most thermodynamically favored shapes of large enough single crystal nanoparticles It states that a given crystallographic facet appears at a distance di from the center of particle which is proportional to its surface energy γi (di/γi = const). In many applications, such as photocatalysis and gas sensing, less chemically stable and more active facets are the most sought for because, due to a different arrangement. Their common feature is that they appear as good candidates for both photocatalysis and gas sensing
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