Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, P. R. China.
Chem Soc Rev. 2018 Nov 12;47(22):8203-8237. doi: 10.1039/c8cs00443a.
Because of its unmatched resource potential, solar energy utilization currently is one of the hottest research areas. Much effort has been devoted to developing advanced materials for converting solar energy into electricity, solar fuels, active chemicals, or heat. Among them, TiO2 nanomaterials have attracted much attention due to their unique properties such as low cost, nontoxicity, good stability and excellent optical and electrical properties. Great progress has been made, but research opportunities are still present for creating new nanostructured TiO2 materials. Core-shell structured nanomaterials are of great interest as they provide a platform to integrate multiple components into a functional system, showing improved or new physical and chemical properties, which are unavailable from the isolated components. Consequently, significant effort is underway to design, fabricate and evaluate core-shell structured TiO2 nanomaterials for solar energy utilization to overcome the remaining challenges, for example, insufficient light absorption and low quantum efficiency. This review strives to provide a comprehensive overview of major advances in the synthesis of core-shell structured TiO2 nanomaterials for solar energy utilization. This review starts from the general protocols to construct core-shell structured TiO2 nanomaterials, and then discusses their applications in photocatalysis, water splitting, photocatalytic CO2 reduction, solar cells and photothermal conversion. Finally, we conclude with an outlook section to offer some insights on the future directions and prospects of core-shell structured TiO2 nanomaterials and solar energy conversion.
由于其无与伦比的资源潜力，太阳能利用目前是最热门的研究领域之一。人们投入了大量精力来开发将太阳能转化为电能、太阳能燃料、活性化学品或热能的先进材料。其中，TiO2 纳米材料因其低成本、无毒、良好的稳定性和优异的光学和电学性能等独特性质而引起了广泛关注。虽然已经取得了很大的进展，但创造新的纳米结构 TiO2 材料仍然存在研究机会。核壳结构纳米材料非常有趣，因为它们为将多个组件集成到一个功能系统提供了一个平台，展示了改进或新的物理和化学性质，这些性质是孤立组件所不具备的。因此，人们正在努力设计、制造和评估用于太阳能利用的核壳结构 TiO2 纳米材料，以克服剩余的挑战，例如，光吸收不足和量子效率低。
本综述旨在全面概述用于太阳能利用的核壳结构 TiO2 纳米材料的合成方面的主要进展。本综述首先从构建核壳结构 TiO2 纳米材料的一般方案开始，然后讨论它们在光催化、水分解、光催化 CO2 还原、太阳能电池和光热转换中的应用。最后，我们在结论部分对核壳结构 TiO2 纳米材料和太阳能转换的未来方向和前景进行了展望。
