Guner Bugrahan, Safikhani-Mahmoudi Mohammad, Li Fengmiao, Zou Ke, Dagdeviren Omur E
Department of Mechanical Engineering, École de technologie supérieure, University of Quebec, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Commun Chem. 2025 Mar 16;8(1):83. doi: 10.1038/s42004-025-01487-1.
High-energy ultraviolet (UVC) irradiation of metal oxides (MOs, e.g., TiO) results in photoinduced surface oxygen vacancies (PI-SOVs), which can change the charge carrier (e.g., electrons and holes) migration dynamics. Although PI-SOVs alter the electronic and chemical properties of MOs, there is no consensus on the penetration depth of the UVC irradiation, which induces PI-SOVs and is an important variable for the design and operation of MO-based systems. Here, we performed optical transmission and time-resolved atomic force microscopy measurements on back-illuminated TiO samples. Our experiments show that the effect of UVC irradiation on MOs can be observed hundreds of micrometers across the bulk, i.e., orders of magnitude larger than previously postulated values. We believe that our findings would be important both for the fundamental understanding of UVC irradiation/penetration and for device design/fabrication processes.
金属氧化物（如TiO）的高能紫外线（UVC）照射会导致光致表面氧空位（PI-SOVs），这会改变电荷载流子（如电子和空穴）的迁移动力学。尽管PI-SOVs会改变金属氧化物的电子和化学性质，但关于诱导PI-SOVs的UVC照射的穿透深度尚无定论，而穿透深度是基于金属氧化物的系统设计和运行的一个重要变量。在此，我们对背照式TiO样品进行了光透射和时间分辨原子力显微镜测量。我们的实验表明，UVC照射对金属氧化物的影响在整个体相中可在数百微米范围内观察到，即比先前假定的值大几个数量级。我们相信，我们的发现对于深入理解UVC照射/穿透以及器件设计/制造过程都将具有重要意义。
