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Preparation and Use of Photocatalytically Active Segmented Ag|ZnO and Coaxial TiO2-Ag Nanowires Made by Templated Electrodeposition
Published on: May 2, 2014
WO₃ nanoflakes for enhanced photoelectrochemical conversion
Wenjie Li1, Peimei Da, Yueyu Zhang
1Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Chemistry and ‡Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, and Department of Physics, Fudan University , Shanghai, 200433, China.
Abstract:
We developed a postgrowth modification method of two-dimensional WO3 nanoflakes by a simultaneous solution etching and reducing process in a weakly acidic condition. The obtained dual etched and reduced WO3 nanoflakes have a much rougher surface, in which oxygen vacancies are created during the simultaneous etching/reducing process for optimized photoelectrochemical performance. The obtained photoanodes show an enhanced photocurrent density of ∼1.10 mA/cm(2) at 1.0 V vs Ag/AgCl (∼1.23 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode), compared to 0.62 mA/cm(2) of pristine WO3 nanoflakes. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurement and the density functional theory calculation demonstrate that this improved performance of dual etched and reduced WO3 nanoflakes is attributed to the increase of charge carrier density as a result of the synergetic effect of etching and reducing.

