A study on the effect of low energy ion beam irradiation on Au/TiO₂ system for its application in photoelectrochemical splitting of water

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• 作者：Anuradha Verma^a ; Anupam Srivastav^a ; Dipika Sharma^a ; Anamika Banerjee^a ; Shailja Sharma^a ; Vibha Rani Satsangi^b ; Rohit Shrivastav^a ; Devesh Kumar Avasthi^c ; ^d ; Sahab Dass^a ; ^{drsahabdas@gmail.com" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author}
• 关键词：Plasmon ; Ion beam irradiation ; Photoelectrochemical cell ; Sol&ndash ; gel
• 刊名：Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：15 July 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：379
• 期：Complete
• 页码：255-261
• 全文大小：1808 K

文摘

Nanostructured TiO₂ thin films were deposited on indium tin oxide (ITO) substrate via sol–gel technique and were modified by plasmonic Au layer. The plasmonic Au modified TiO₂ (Au/TiO₂) thin films were then irradiated with 500 keV Ar²⁺ ion beam at different ion fluences viz. 1 × 10¹⁶, 3 × 10¹⁶ and 1 × 10¹⁷ to study the effect of nuclear energy deposition on the morphology, crystallinity, band gap, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) peak exhibited by Au particles and photoelectrochemical properties of the system. Prepared thin films were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) measurements and UV–visible spectroscopy. The photoelectrochemical measurements revealed that both Au/TiO₂ and Au/TiO₂ thin film irradiated at 1 × 10¹⁶ fluence exhibits enhanced photoelectrochemical response in comparison to pristine TiO₂. The film irradiated at 1 × 10¹⁶ fluence offered maximum applied bias photon-to-current efficiency (ABPE) and shows 6 times increment in photocurrent density which was attributed to more negative flat band potential, maximum decrease in band gap, high open circuit voltage (V_oc) and reduced charge transfer resistance.