Jia Tiekun, Sun Chenxi, Shi Nianfeng, Yu Dongsheng, Long Fei, Hu Ji, Wang Jilin, Dong Binbin, Li Jili, Fu Fang, Hu Shujing, Lee Joong Hee
Henan Province International Joint Laboratory of Materials for Solar Energy Conversion and Lithium Sodium Based Battery, Luoyang Institute of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471023, China.
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541004, China.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Sep 25;12(19):3342. doi: 10.3390/nano12193342.
Regardless of its good electron-transfer ability and chemical stability, pure ZnSnO (ZSO) still has intrinsic deficiencies of a narrow spectral response region, poor absorption ability, and high photo-activated carrier recombination rate. Aiming to overcome the deficiencies above-mentioned, we designed a facile hydrothermal route for etching ZSO nanoparticles in a dilute acetic acid solution, through which efficient oxygen vacancy defect engineering was accomplished and SnO nanocrystals were obtained with an ultrafine particle size. In comparison with the untreated ZSO nanoparticles, the specific surface area of SnO nanocrystals was substantially enlarged, subsequently leading to the notable augmentation of active sites for the photo-degradation reaction. Aside from the above, it is worth noting that SnO nanocrystals were endowed with a broad spectral response, enhancing light absorption capacity and the photo-activated carrier transfer rate with the aid of oxygen vacancy defect engineering. Accordingly, SnO nanocrystals exhibited significantly enhanced photoactivity toward the degradation of the organic dye rhodamine B (RhB), which could be imputed to the synergistic effect of increasing active sites, intensified visible-light harvesting, and the separation rate of the photo-activated charge carrier caused by the oxygen vacancy defect engineering. In addition, these findings will inspire us to open up a novel pathway to design and prepare oxide compound photocatalysts modified by oxygen vacancy defects in pursuing excellent visible-light photoactivity.
尽管纯ZnSnO（ZSO）具有良好的电子转移能力和化学稳定性，但仍存在本征缺陷，如光谱响应区域窄、吸收能力差以及光激活载流子复合率高。为了克服上述缺陷，我们设计了一种简便的水热路线，在稀醋酸溶液中蚀刻ZSO纳米颗粒，通过该路线实现了有效的氧空位缺陷工程，并获得了具有超细粒径的SnO纳米晶体。与未处理的ZSO纳米颗粒相比，SnO纳米晶体的比表面积大幅增大，随后导致光降解反应活性位点显著增加。除此之外，值得注意的是，借助氧空位缺陷工程，SnO纳米晶体具有宽光谱响应，增强了光吸收能力和光激活载流子转移速率。因此，SnO纳米晶体对有机染料罗丹明B（RhB）的降解表现出显著增强的光活性，这可归因于氧空位缺陷工程导致的活性位点增加、可见光捕获增强以及光激活电荷载流子分离速率提高的协同效应。此外，这些发现将启发我们开辟一条新途径，在追求优异可见光光活性方面设计和制备经氧空位缺陷修饰的氧化物复合光催化剂。
