A novel thermal exfoliation strategy has been proposed to synthesize high-quality Ag/TiO₂ head–body nanosnowman nanoparticles (AgTiNPs, with the head and body being single Ag and TiO₂ nanoparticles, respectively) for the first time. The obtained samples were characterized with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) and photoluminescence (PL) emission spectra, etc. Results show that loaded Ag nanoparticles could exfoliate with a part of an adjacent caducous TiO₂ nanosheet during calcination treatment, thereby fabricating high-quality Ag/TiO₂ head–body nanosnowman nanoparticles. The prepared AgTiNPs show a uniform particle size, a high dispersion and enhanced interactions between Ag heads and TiO₂ bodies. Compared with calcined Ag/DHS, AgTiNPs exhibit an enhanced photocatalytic performance in the degradation of RhB and solar H₂ production due to improved charge carrier separation. The proposed thermal exfoliation strategy might open up a new method for the fabrication of other semiconductor–metal nanosnowman nanoparticles with enhanced photochemical properties.

中文翻译：

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一种新型的热剥落策略，用于制造具有增强的光催化性能的高质量Ag / TiO ₂纳米雪人纳米颗粒†

已经提出了一种新颖的热剥落策略，以首次合成高质量的Ag / TiO ₂头体纳米雪人纳米颗粒（AgTiNPs，头和体分别为单个Ag和TiO ₂纳米颗粒）。获得的样品通过透射电子显微镜（TEM），X射线光电子能谱（XPS）和光致发光（PL）发射光谱等进行了表征。结果表明，负载的Ag纳米粒子在剥离过程中会与一部分相邻的TiO ₂纳米片剥落。煅烧处理，从而制造出高质量的Ag / TiO ₂头体纳米雪人纳米颗粒。制备的AgTiNPs粒径均匀，分散度高，并且Ag头与TiO ₂体之间的相互作用增强。与煅烧的Ag / DHS相比，由于改善了的载流子分离，AgTiNPs在RhB的降解和太阳能H _2的生产中表现出增强的光催化性能。拟议的热剥落策略可能会为制造其他具有增强光化学特性的半导体-金属纳米雪人纳米粒子开辟新的方法。