Visible-Light Photocatalytic Application of Hierarchical Au-ZnO Flower-Rod Heterostructures via Surface Plasmon Resonance

Abstract

The semiconductor metal oxide, ZnO, is limited to application in photocatalysis because of large bandgap. Metallic nanostructures are utilized to enhance visible-light absorption and improve photocatalytic activity via surface plasmon resonance (SPR). In this work, through a facile thermal decomposition method, the Au nanoparticles (NPs) were successfully loaded on oriented hierarchical ZnO flower-rod (ZFRs) heterostructures, which have a higher areal proportion of exposed active (001) crystal faces. The results indicate that ZFRs are wurtzite phase grown along the [001] direction and the Au NPs spread on the surface of ZFRs in metallic form. It reveals that there is an electronic interaction between Au NPs and ZFRs, and more oxygen molecules are adsorbed on the surface of Au-ZnO flower-rod heterostructures (AZFRs). The AZFRs show a strong absorbance in visible region due to the SPR and enhance the separation of electron–hole pair, resulting in an improvement of photocatalytic activity under visible-light irradiation. During 80 min, the degradation efficiency of rhodamine B for AZFRs-20 is about 3.7 times as the pure ZFRs. Moreover, the AZFRs exhibit predominant photoelectrochemical properties, and the photocurrent can reach 1.2 × 10−4 A. Finally, the as-prepared photocatalytic device composed of AZFRs based on indium doped tin oxide glass is convenient to recycle without centrifugation.