Abstract

In nature, sequential harvesting of light widely exists in the old life entity, i.e. cyanobacteria, to maximize the light absorption and enhance the photosynthesis efficiency. Inspired by nature, we propose a brand new concept of temporally-spatially sequential harvesting of light in one single particle, which has purpose-designed heterogeneous hollow multi-shelled structures (HoMSs) with porous shells composed of nanoparticle subunits. Structurally, HoMSs consist of different band-gap materials outside-in, thus realizing the efficient harvesting of light with different wavelengths. Moreover, introducing oxygen vacancies into each nanoparticle subunit can also enhance the light absorption. With the benefit of sequential harvesting of light in HoMSs, the quantum efficiency at wavelength of 400 nm is enhanced by six times compared with the corresponding nanoparticles. Impressively, using these aforementioned materials as photocatalysts, highly efficient photocatalytic water splitting is realized, which cannot be achieved by using the nanoparticle counterparts. This new concept of temporally-spatially sequential harvesting of solar light paves the way for solving the ever-growing energy demand.

中文翻译：

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通过具有分层孔隙的异质空心壳高效连续收集太阳光

 抽象的

在自然界中，古老的生命体——蓝细菌中广泛存在着光的顺序收集，以最大限度地吸收光并提高光合作用效率。受大自然的启发，我们提出了一种在单个粒子中时空顺序收集光的全新概念，该概念具有专门设计的异质中空多壳结构（HoMS），其多孔壳由纳米粒子亚基组成。在结构上，HoMS由外而内不同带隙材料组成，从而实现不同波长光的高效收集。此外，在每个纳米粒子亚基中引入氧空位也可以增强光吸收。得益于 HoMS 中顺序收集光的优势，与相应的纳米颗粒相比，400 nm 波长下的量子效率提高了六倍。令人印象深刻的是，使用上述材料作为光催化剂，实现了高效的光催化水分解，这是使用纳米粒子对应物无法实现的。这种时空顺序收集太阳光的新概念为解决不断增长的能源需求铺平了道路。