Plasmonic gold nanoparticles for ZnO-nanotube photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cell application

Abd-Ellah, Marwa; Moghimi, Nafiseh; Zhang, Lei; Thomas, Joseph P.; McGillivray, Donald; Srivastava, Saurabh; Leung, K. T.

doi:10.1039/c5nr08029k

Cited by 49 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…An effective solution to successfully enhance the amount of adsorbed dye molecules is represented by the fabrication of nanostructured ZnO photoanodes. Indeed ZnO can be easily synthesized in countless low‐dimensional structures, such as nanowires, nanotubes, nanoflowers, nanocones, coral‐like, sponge‐like, and nanocrystal aggregates, that show increased surface‐to‐volume ratios and hence high surface areas exposed to the dye molecules. In this way the higher dye loading ability of TiO 2 can be pursued, together with the possibility to control the wetting behavior of the ZnO photoanodes, that ensure a proper functionalization with the light absorbing molecules .…”

Section: Surface‐engineering Of Zno Nanostructures With Nanoparticlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The polar surface and anisotropic structure of ZnO can be usefully exploited to form different kinds of micro and nanostructures from 0D to 3D, including, but not limited to nanowires, nanotubes, nanobelts, nanorings, flower‐like morphologies, multipods, tetrapods, sponge‐like structures and so on ( Figure ). Therefore, several research efforts have been invested in studying various preparation procedures for ZnO micro and nano‐materials.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Surface Engineering of Nanostructured ZnO Surfaces

Laurenti

Stassi

Canavese

et al. 2016

Adv Materials Inter

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are oriented in one direction and their assembly and stacking produces the wurtzite hexagonal symmetry. The noncentrosymmetric and anisotropic crystalline structure of wurtzite-like ZnO generates very interesting properties such as piezo-and pyro-electricity: the application of an external stimulus, like mechanical stress or temperature, deforms the tetrahedron structure. This deformation results in a separation between the positive and negative centers of charge, inducing the formation of a dipole moment. [7,8] The polar surface and anisotropic structure of ZnO can be usefully exploited to form different kinds of micro and nanostructures from 0D to 3D, [5] including, but not limited to nanowires, [9][10][11][12] nanotubes, [13,14] nanobelts, [15][16][17][18][19] nanorings, [20] flower-like morphologies, [21][22][23][24][25] multipods, [26,27] tetrapods, [28][29][30] sponge-like structures [31][32][33][34] and so on [29,[35][36][37][38][39] (Figure 1). Therefore, several research efforts have been invested in studying various preparation procedures for ZnO micro and nano-materials. Wet chemical approaches, like sol-gel, hydrothermal growths, electrodeposition and template-assisted routes, [40,41] as well as vapor-phase methods, for example chemical vapour deposition (CVD), physical vapour deposition (PVD) including sputtering and evaporation approaches, [42][43][44] and epitaxial growth methods [45] are among the most used ones. The great advantages of the wet chemical approaches are the high synthesis versatility, low temperature employed and low costs. [9] From the other side, dry methods take advantage of the high quality and excellent control over the level of crystallinity of the synthesized ZnO structures, as well as the absence of contamination and high purity of the final material. [46] The combination of different properties with the ease and high versatile synthesis of ZnO material in different micro and nanostructures offers a huge possibility of potential applications.For example, ZnO is already used as an efficient catalyst in the selective oxidation of involving oxygenates (i.e., alcohols, aldehydes, and carboxylic acids) and in methanol synthesis catalysts. It is also largely applied as protective, anti-corrosion layer in galvanized steel products, [49][50][51] as well as in paints and sunscreens as an UV absorber. Its biocompatibility makes this material suitable, in the form of microparticles, for paste formulations in cosmetic applications.The combination of the piezoelectric with the semiconducting properties of ZnO is found to result into new exciting physical properties, [52][53][54] and it has recently opened the research field to energy harvesting application. ZnO nanomaterials can be thus used as nanogenerators, able to convert the mechanical deformation from the surrounding environment into electrical Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanostructures represent promising substrate materials for numerous applications, ranging from new generation solar cells, to bio-and chemical sensors. This interest is due ...

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Section: Surface‐engineering Of Zno Nanostructures With Nanoparticlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface Engineering of Nanostructured ZnO Surfaces

Laurenti

Stassi

Canavese

et al. 2016

Adv Materials Inter

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“…543 nm (marked by the dashed line). This can be ascribed to the surface plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles [37] that were rather polydisperse in size and aggregated to some extent ( Figure 1). The results also suggest a similar structure of the gold nanoparticles within the series Figure 4 depicts the EPR spectra of the series of AuTiO 2 nanocomposites.…”

Section: Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (Epr)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of oxygen vacancies on the electrocatalytic activity of AuTiO2 nanocomposites towards oxygen reduction

Sweeney

Roseman

Deming

et al. 2016

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

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Functional nanocomposites based on gold nanoparticles deposited onto TiO 2 colloids were prepared by a simple wet chemistry method, and subject to hydrothermal treatment at a controlled temperature in the presence of ascorbic acid. Transmission electron microscopic measurements showed that the gold nanoparticles (10-30 nm in diameter) were embedded within the TiO 2 matrix consisting of colloids of 5-10 nm in diameter and anatase crystalline structures, as evidenced in x-ray diffraction studies. Interestingly, electron paramagnetic resonance measurements showed the formation of oxygen vacancies after hydrothermal treatment and the concentrations of oxygen vacancies increased with the amount of ascorbic acid added. Consistent results were obtained in x-ray photoelectron spectroscopic measurements, which suggested partial charge transfer from gold to oxygen-deficient TiO 2. The Au:Ti atomic ratio in the nanocomposites was estimated to be ca. 11% and consistent among the series of samples. Electrochemically, the nanocomposites exhibited apparent electrocatalytic activity towards oxygen reduction reactions in alkaline media, which showed a peak-shaped variation with the concentration of the oxygen vacancies. This was accounted for by the deliberate manipulation of the binding energy of oxygen species onto the nanocomposite surfaces. In addition, the AuTiO 2

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“…So, this is an effective method to deposit a shell on these 1-D nanostructures, to increase the surface roughness. The shell is also considered to be a blocking layer for suppressing the electron-hole pair recombination by forming an energy barrier on the interface of ZnO@TiO 2 [22,23]. Many novel core/shell structures, including ZnO@TiO 2 [24], ZnO@In 2 S 3 [25,26], ZnO@CdSe [27] and so forth, have been achieved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ZnO@TiO2 Core/Shell Nanowire Arrays with Different Thickness of TiO2 Shell for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Liu

Wang

et al. 2020

Crystals

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The ZnO@TiO2 core/shell nanowire arrays with different thicknesses of the TiO2 shell were synthesized, through depositing TiO2 on the ZnO nanowire arrays using the pulsed laser deposition process. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images show that these core/shell nanowires were homogeneously coated with TiO2 nanoparticles with high crystallinity, appearing to be a rather rough surface compared to pure ZnO nanowires. The efficiency of ZnO@TiO2 core/shell structure-based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was improved compared with pure ZnO nanowires. This is mainly attributed to the enlarged internal surface area of the core/shell structures, which increases dye adsorption on the anode to improve the light harvest. In addition, the energy barrier which formed at the interface between ZnO and TiO2 promoted the charge separation and suppressed the carrier recombination. Furthermore, the efficiency of DSSCs was further improved by increasing the thickness of the TiO2 shell. This work shows an efficient method to achieve high power conversion efficiency in core/shell nanowire-based DSSCs.

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Plasmonic gold nanoparticles for ZnO-nanotube photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cell application

Cited by 49 publications

References 38 publications

Surface Engineering of Nanostructured ZnO Surfaces

Surface Engineering of Nanostructured ZnO Surfaces

Impacts of oxygen vacancies on the electrocatalytic activity of AuTiO2 nanocomposites towards oxygen reduction

ZnO@TiO2 Core/Shell Nanowire Arrays with Different Thickness of TiO2 Shell for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

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