Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials Laboratory (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Suzhou 215123, Jiangsu, China.
College of Energy, Soochow Institute for Energy and Materials Innovations & Key Laboratory of Advanced Carbon Materials and Wearable Energy Technologies of Jiangsu Province, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, Jiangsu, China.
Nanoscale. 2019 Dec 21;11(47):23058-23064. doi: 10.1039/c9nr07191a. Epub 2019 Nov 27.
Low solar light absorption and high electron-hole pair recombination are still the main challenges for solar energy conversion. Here, we design a plasmonic nanoparticle (NP)-film with a unique structure combining the advantages of a Au NP and film, which exhibits strong broadband absorption from the visible to near-infrared (NIR) wavelength range. In addition, the high density of sub-1 nm inter-particle gaps in the Au NP-film supports electromagnetic field enhancement of several orders of magnitude that greatly promotes the generation and separation of electron-hole pairs. Accordingly, the plasmonic NP-film-assisted photocatalyst (TiO/90Au/TiO) leads to an 88-fold increase in the photocurrent density at 0.75 V vs. RHE in 25% methanol solution under visible-NIR light irradiation (λ > 420 nm) compared to a TiO film, which is higher than those of the ever reported Au/TiO photocatalysts in the entire visible-NIR range. Our finding indicates a promising way to explore full solar spectrum photocatalysts, which can be easily extended to other energy conversion applications.
低太阳光吸收和高电子-空穴对复合仍然是太阳能转换的主要挑战。在这里，我们设计了一种具有独特结构的等离子体纳米粒子（NP）-薄膜，结合了 Au NP 和薄膜的优点，在从可见到近红外（NIR）波长范围内表现出强宽带吸收。此外，Au NP-薄膜中亚 1nm 粒子间隙的高密度支持几个数量级的电磁场增强，极大地促进了电子-空穴对的产生和分离。因此，等离子体 NP-薄膜辅助光催化剂（TiO/90Au/TiO）在 25%甲醇溶液中在可见-NIR 光照射（λ>420nm）下在 0.75V 相对于 RHE 的光电流密度增加了 88 倍，高于整个可见-NIR 范围内报道的所有 Au/TiO 光催化剂的光电流密度。我们的发现表明了一种探索全太阳光谱光催化剂的有前途的方法，这种方法可以很容易地扩展到其他能量转换应用。
