Effect of Ag loading position on the photocatalytic performance of TiO₂ nanocolumn arrays

Abstract

Plasmonic metal/semiconductor composites have attracted great attention for efficient solar energy harvesting in photovoltaic and photocatalytic applications owing to their extremely high visible-light absorption and tuned effective band gap. In this work, Ag-loaded TiO2 nanocolumn (Ag-TNC) arrays were fabricated based on anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template by combining atomic layer deposition (ALD) and vacuum evaporation. The effects of the Ag loading position and deposition thickness, and the morphology, structure and composition of Ag-deposited TNC arrays on its optical and photocatalytic properties were studied. The Ag-filled TiO2 (AFT) nanocolumn arrays exhibited higher removal efficiency of methylene blue (MB) compared with Ag-coated TiO2 (ACT) nanocolumn arrays and pure TiO2 nanocolumns arrays. Both experimental and theoretical simulation results demonstrated that the enhanced photocatalytic performance of AFT nanocolumn arrays was attributed to the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of Ag and the absorption of light by TiO2. These results represent a promising step forward to the development of high-performance photocatalysts for energy conversion and storage.

Enhanced visible-light photodegradation of fluoroquinolone-based antibiotics and E. coli growth inhibition using Ag–TiO2 nanoparticles

“…The results obtained in this work are good and t well with the previously published ndings for similar catalysts, where comparable or even larger drops in catalyst efficiency were observed aer cycling. [55][56][57] Our results indicate that the prepared Ag-TiO 2 NPs possess high stability and durability thus opening the path, aer further studies, for a possible future industrial application.…”