TiO<sub>2</sub>-Coated ZnO Nanowire Arrays: A Photocatalyst with Enhanced Chemical Corrosion Resistance

Photocatalysis is proven to be the most efficient and environmentally friendly method for the degradation of organic pollutants in water purification. To meet the requirement of large-scale water treatment, there are two important points: One is the lifetime and chemical stability of the photocataly...

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Autores principales: Lan Gao, Elyes Nefzaoui, Frédéric Marty, Mazen Erfan, Stéphane Bastide, Yamin Leprince-Wang, Tarik Bourouina
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: MDPI AG 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/efd98e12f21e4914a783ed94381ac65c
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Sumario:Photocatalysis is proven to be the most efficient and environmentally friendly method for the degradation of organic pollutants in water purification. To meet the requirement of large-scale water treatment, there are two important points: One is the lifetime and chemical stability of the photocatalyst material, especially in the complex and harsh aqueous conditions. The other is the ease of synthesis of such photocatalysts with specific nano-morphology. In this work, two common photocatalyst materials, zinc oxide (ZnO) and titanium dioxide (TiO<sub>2</sub>), are selected to form more sustainable photocatalysts with high chemical stability. This involves the combination of both TiO<sub>2</sub> and ZnO in a two-step simple synthesis method. It appears advantageous to exploit the conformal deposition of atomic layer deposition (ALD) to achieve nanometer-thick TiO<sub>2</sub> coating on ZnO nanowires (NWs) with a high aspect ratio, which are firmly anchored to a substrate and exhibit a large specific surface area. The high chemical stability of the ALD TiO<sub>2</sub> coating has been investigated in detail and proven to be effective under both strong acid and strong alkaline aqueous solutions. In addition, photocatalysis experiments with organic dyes show that via this simple two-step synthesis method, the produced ZnO/TiO<sub>2</sub> tandem photocatalysts does indeed exhibit improved chemical stability in a harsh environment, while allowing efficient photodegradation.