Hierarchical structures produced using unbalanced magnetron sputtering for photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine 6G dye

Polychronopoulou, Kyriaki; Aouadi, Samir; Sirota, Benjamin; Stone, D. S.; Wang, L.; Kohli, Punit; McCarroll, Matthew E.

doi:10.1007/s11051-013-2180-6

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 43 publications

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“…Typically, the fabrication method of a 3-D upstanding nanoforest can be encapsulated as follow: as-prepared colloidal quantum dots as seeds are spin-coated or drop-casted onto substrates to grow length-wise NWs hydrothermally and reduplicate seeding steps need to be conducted for subordinate NW growth on trunks to obtain multigeneration nanostructures. The seeding method is a cost-effective procedure with low synthesis temperature and ease of scaling up, which account for its prevalence, in remarkable comparison with expensive and complex factor-dependent vaporliquid-solid (VLS), metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and magnetron sputtering methods which need either extreme requisites like high temperatures or the assistance of noble metal catalysts [19,21,[33][34][35][36]. However, the seeding method still holds the following drawbacks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dependence of Photoelectrochemical Properties on Geometry Factors of Interconnected “Caterpillar-like” ZnO Networks

Sun

Lozano

et al. 2016

Electrochimica Acta

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To elevate the spatial occupancy of one-dimensional ZnO nanostructures and overcome the limitations of multistep seeding methods currently widely used, a rational, facile and highyielding procedure has been reported by our group previously for the fabrication of the interconnected three-dimensional "caterpillar-like" ZnO nanostructured networks (CZNs) for photoelectrochemical applications. In this work, by fine-tuning the synthesis procedure and manipulating the growth process of the ZnO nanostructures, we investigated the dependence of their photoelectrochemical properties on geometry factors of these unique CZNs consisting of branched ZnO nanowires onto ZnO nanofibers with improved and tunable surface-to-volume ratio and roughness factor. They offer mechanically and electrically robust interconnected networks with open micrometer-scale structures and short hole diffusion length. We further studied the preferential light-material interaction and charge separation to maximize the phototo-hydrogen conversion efficiency. When used as photoanode, our CZNs not only favor sunlight harvesting with multireflection ability, but also suppress the recombination of photogenerated charge. Compared to the literature results, our CZN photoanodes with ZnO nanobranches of ~2.2 μm in length and ~25 nm in diameter exhibited the highest photocurrent density of 0.72 mA•cm-2 at +1.2 V (versus Ag/AgCl) and conversion efficiency of 0.209% at +0.

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