CdS sensitized 3D hierarchical TiO2/ZnO heterostructure for efficient solar energy conversion

Abstract

For conventional dye or quantum dot sensitized solar cells, which are fabricated using mesoporous films, the inefficient electron transport due to defects such as grain boundaries and surface traps is a major drawback. To simultaneously increase the carrier transport efficiency as well as the surface area, optimal-assembling of hierarchical nanostructures is an attractive approach. Here, a three dimensional (3D) hierarchical heterostructure, consisting of CdS sensitized one dimensional (1D) ZnO nanorods deposited on two dimensional (2D) TiO2 (001) nanosheet, is prepared via a solution-process method. Such heterstructure exhibits significantly enhanced photoelectric and photocatalytic H2 evolution performance compared with CdS sensitized 1D ZnO nanorods/1D TiO2 nanorods photoanode, as a result of the more efficient light harvesting over the entire visible light spectrum and the effective electron transport through a highly connected 3D network.

Influence of annealing ambient on the structure, photoluminescence and photocatalytic activity of low temperature grown ZnO nanowires

“…Among them, hydrothermal method is an economical and low-temperature fabrication method. However, the large defect concentration is inevitable for the synthesis of ZnO nanowires during a low-temperature hydrothermal route, such as surface defects, near surface traps and surface adsorbed species [5,6], which maybe result in passivation or inefficient electron transport [7]. In general, a post annealing treatment is a effective way to modify the surface defects.…”

Free-standing carbon nanotube–titania photoactive sheets

“…CNT array was synthesized using water-assistant chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [2,32]. As shown in Fig.…”

“…Many photocatalytic materials have been used for environmental remediation, dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), and generating hydrogen gas from water splitting [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Titania (TiO 2 ), a photocatalytic material, has been extensively studied because of its chemical stability, possible non-toxicity, photocatalytic activity, environmental sustainability, and low cost [8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

Perspective—A Brief Perspective on the Fabrication of Hierarchical Nanostructure for Solar Water Splitting Photoelectrochemical Cells

“…Likewise, the deposition process was naturally imported to make hierarchical nanostructure in terms of formation thin film structure on the metal oxide nanostructure. The deposition process was conducted by using various vacuum-based equipment such as atomic layer deposition (ALD), [40][41][42][43] chemical-vapor deposition, 21 E-beam evaporator, 44,45 pulsed laser deposition (PLD) 46,47 and sputtering 48 on the metal oxide nanostructures. By this way, a robust and dense thin film structure was accurately formed from only several nanometers to tens of nanometers onto the metal oxide nanostructure, obtained hierarchical nanostructure by controlling deposition processing conditions.…”