Issue 12, 2011
From the journal:

Nanoscale

Enhanced photocatalytic activity of hierarchical ZnO nanoplate-nanowire architecture as environmentally safe and facilely recyclable photocatalyst

Feng Xu,a   Yuting Shen,a   Litao Sun,*a   Haibo Zengb  and  Yinong Luc  

* Corresponding authors

a SEU-FEI Nano-Pico Center, Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
E-mail: slt@seu.edu.cn
Fax: +86-25-83790873
Tel: +86-25-83790573

b International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Namiki 1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

c State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing, China

Abstract

A hierarchical ZnO nanoplate-nanowire (ZNP-ZNW) architecture immobilized onto a substrate via a facile two-step synthesis strategy was used as an environmentally safe and recyclable photocatalyst. It showed greatly enhanced photocatalytic activity compared with a monomorphological ZnO nanoplate structure in the degradation of methyl orange (MO). The higher content of surface oxygen defects, which can capture the photogenerated electrons and holes separately and make them available for decomposing organic contaminants, is considered to play an important role in the degradation of MO and makes a major contribution to the enhanced photocatalysis. Increasing the surface-to-volume (S/V) ratio without limit cannot benefit the photocatalytic activity significantly if there are not enough defects to separate additional photogenerated charges caused by a larger S/V ratio. A detailed photocatalytic mechanism related to surface defects of the hierarchical architecture was clearly demonstrated. The present study provides a new paradigm for further understanding the photocatalytic mechanism and suggests a new direction to design high-efficiency photocatalysts based on increasing the number of surface defects of nanostructures.

Graphical abstract: Enhanced photocatalytic activity of hierarchical ZnO nanoplate-nanowire architecture as environmentally safe and facilely recyclable photocatalyst

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1NR11033K
Article type
Paper
Submitted
05 Aug 2011
Accepted
14 Sep 2011
First published
28 Oct 2011

Nanoscale, 2011,3, 5020-5025

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Enhanced photocatalytic activity of hierarchical ZnO nanoplate-nanowire architecture as environmentally safe and facilely recyclable photocatalyst

F. Xu, Y. Shen, L. Sun, H. Zeng and Y. Lu, Nanoscale, 2011, 3, 5020 DOI: 10.1039/C1NR11033K

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