Publication date: 15th December 2014
Zinc oxide is a well-known photocatalytically active material for water splitting. It fulfills the functional requirements in terms of electronic structure and electrochemical properties and can be processed in the form of nanosized particles to enable versatile strategies for material integration into functional devices. Stabilization of the particles with small ligands in organic solution allows for fabrication with methods such as spincoating, dropcasting, self-assembly, covalent as well as electrostatic attachments in order to meet the exact requirements of the application. Additionally, the nanoparticles possess a large surface to volume ratio which supports efficient charge-carrier dynamics, and the prevalent surface states can also improve electron-hole separation.
The photocatalytic activity of pure zinc oxide, a wide band gap semiconductor, is limited to a low solar-to-hydrogen conversion because it absorbs only a small proportion of solar photons. Additionally, the direct absorption of UV light can be associated with unfavorable side effects such as device material degradation and corrosion. Coupling plasmonic gold particles to the zinc oxide nanostructures can help to overcome this limitation. The plasmonic oscillation of small gold particles (~ 5 nm) is excited by green photons, which shift the photocatalytic activity of zinc oxide to the visible range.
In our work we present a facile two-step synthesis of tailored nanosized gold-zinc oxide hybrids. In the first step zinc oxide nanopyramids are generated via a basic hydrolysis using oleic acid as a stabilizing agent. In the second step a photocatalytic reaction yields gold nanoparticle formation exclusively on the tip of the pyramid.
We present results on the structural, optical and electrochemical characterization of the nanohybrids, in particular the electronic structure which determines the photocatalytic properties. The application of the gold-zinc oxide nanopyramids in water splitting is discussed using the obtained results from cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.
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