Oriented epitaxial TiO2 nanowires for water splitting

Nanotechnology
Wenting HouDavid Kisailus

Abstract

Highly oriented epitaxial rutile titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanowire arrays have been hydrothermally grown on polycrystalline TiO2 templates with their orientation dependent on the underlying TiO2 grain. Both the diameter and areal density of the nanowires were tuned by controlling the precursor concentration, and the template surface energy and roughness. Nanowire tip sharpness was influenced by precursor solubility and diffusivity. A new secondary ion mass spectrometer technique has been developed to install additional nucleation sites in single crystal TiO2 templates and the effect on nanowire growth was probed. Using the acquired TiO2 nanowire synthesis knowhow, an assortment of nanowire arrays were installed upon the surface of undoped TiO2 photo-electrodes and assessed for their photo-electrochemical water splitting performance. The key result obtained was that the presence of short and dispersed nanowire arrays significantly improved the photocurrent when the illumination intensity was increased from 100 to 200 mW cm(-2). This is attributed to the alignment of the homoepitaxially grown nanowires to the [001] direction, which provides the fastest charge transport in TiO2 and an improved pathway for photo-holes to find water ...Continue Reading

References

Aug 10, 2006·Nano Letters·Jiming BaoZ F Ren
Sep 18, 2007·Advances in Colloid and Interface Science·Guozhong Cao, Dawei Liu
Jun 19, 2009·Environmental Science & Technology·Xiaoli TanBernd Grambow
Jul 29, 2010·ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces·Justin J HillKirk J Ziegler
Oct 18, 2011·Nano Letters·In Sun ChoXiaolin Zheng
Nov 23, 2013·Chemical Society Reviews·Fermín Otálora, JuanMa García-Ruiz

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