Photonic crystal structural-induced Cu3SnS4/Ti3+-TiO2 p-n coaxial heterojunction arrays for light-driven H2 production and pollutant degradation

Publication date: 5 November 2017
Source:Materials & Design, Volume 133
Author(s): Yan Li, Yin Chang, Fang-Ting Liu, Yun Zhao, Jian Wang, Cheng-Wei Wang
By combining the n-type Ti³⁺ self-doped TiO2 photonic crystal structure with p-type ternary semiconductor Cu3SnS4, a new potential nanostructure of photonic crystal structural-induced p-n coaxial heterojunction arrays (denoted as CTS/Ti³⁺-PhC-TNAs) was designed and successfully fabricated by periodic pulse anodic oxidation combined with in-situ self-assembly technique. To be used in photocatalytic H2 production and organic pollutant removal after optimizing both the structure and Ti³⁺ doping ratio, CTS/Ti³⁺-PhC-TNAs exhibited significantly enhanced photocatalytic activities of 159.29±1.7μmol·h⁻¹·m⁻² for H2 evolution and 0.08308h⁻¹·m⁻² for methyl orange degradation under simulated sunlight irradiation, which is 9.4 and 3.1 times higher than that of the PhC-TNAs. Detailed investigations revealed that the improved photoactivity of CTS/Ti³⁺-PhC-TNAs can be attributed to the accelerated photogenerated electron-hole separation at p-n heterojunction interfaces, the facilitated electron transfer along the coaxial heterojunction arrays and the enhanced light-harvesting through the unique designed photonic crystal composite structure as well. The present study shows a new insight and significantly improvement of photoactivity when Cu3SnS4is introduced to form a p-n coaxial heterojunction arrays with photonic crystal structured TiO2, which provides a new means to design and fabricate novel film photocatalyst for high efficient solar energy conversion and photodegradation.

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