UV photoelectric properties of aligned TiO2 nanotubes with different wall thickness
Introduction
In the last decade, just as nanotubes, nanorods, nanowires and many other one-dimensional nanostructures have gained an increasing amount of research because of their unique physical/chemical properties and wide range of applications in various fields [1]. Compared to the chaotic one-dimensional nanotubes, ordered one-dimensional nanotubes have attracted much interest due to their outstanding performance in lots of functional devices including light emitted diodes (LEDs) [2], photodetectors [3], solar cells [4], field-effect transistors (FETs) [5] and gas sensors [6]. Therefore, the method of preparing highly ordered one-dimensional nanotubes has important significance.
Traditional UV photodetectors with wide band gap semiconductor materials such as ZnO, SiC and GaN have been widely reported due to their good wavelength selectivity and spectral responsivity [[7], [8], [9]]. In addition, titanium dioxide is also an ideal material for fabricating photodetectors, which has the advantages of low price, excellent photoelectric conversion capabilities and inherent physical/chemical properties [10,11]. At the same time, it is widely used in photocatalysis [[12], [13], [14], [15]], solar cells [16] and gas sensors [17]. To date, most of the researches on TiO2 photodetectors are based on one-dimensional vertical array structure. For example, Wu et al. successfully synthesized a vertically grown single-layer graphene-TiO2 nanotube array heterojunction by chemical vapor deposition combined with anodic oxidation [18]; Li et al. prepared a vertical TiO2 nanowire junction array using a hydrothermal method [19]; Kundu et al. synthesized a uniform TiO2 nanotube array based on silver nanoparticles by hydrothermal method [20]. Compared with the vertically aligned or disordered TiO2 nanotubes prepared by hydrothermal method and anodic oxidation method [[21], [22], [23], [24]], the ultra long and horizontally ordered TiO2 nanotubes are more suitable for the fabrication of flexible devices and also conducive to the fabrication of transistor logic gate [25,26]. Therefore, ultra long horizontally ordered TiO2 nanotubes are beneficial to large area heterogeneous integration and have a wide range of potential applications in flexible multi-functional sensor devices.
In this paper, aligned polymer-Ti core-shell nanowires with different shell thickness were synthesized by electrospinning and pulse laser deposition (PLD), and then calcined in oxygen enriched environment to obtain TiO2 nanotubes with different wall thickness. Simultaneously, the morphology, micro-structure, crystallinity and surface element composition of the samples were investigated. Finally, the samples with different wall thickness were tested for UV response. The samples with 18 min deposition time had higher UV response and shorter response recovery time.
Section snippets
Preparation of aligned TiO2 nanotubes
Firstly, one-dimensional ordered polymer polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP, Mw ≈ 1300000) nanowires were prepared by electrostatic spinning with multi parallel electrodes [27,28]. The specific method is to add 0.2 g of PVP to 3 ml of alcohol and stir for 30 min to form a precursor solution. The resulting solution was filled into a glass syringe fitted with a nozzle. The nozzle was connected to the positive electrode of a high-voltage power supply with 17 kV, the negative electrode was connected to an
Morphological and structural characterization
From Fig. 1a, it was clearly that ultra-long and large-area PVP nanofibers can be obtained by electrospinning. Fig. 1b shows an SEM photograph of aligned nanotubes obtained by calcining PVP-Ti core-shell nanowires at high temperature in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, which corresponds to a deposition time of 18 min. It can be seen that the diameter of the nanotube is uniform and the surface of the tube is very smooth. Fig. 1c shows the SEM cross-section image of the nanotubes in Fig. 1b，which
Conclusion
In combination with electrospinning, pulsed laser deposition and annealing, horizontally ordered TiO2 nanotubes with different wall thicknesses were prepared. TiO2 nanotubes are a mixture of anatase and rutile, and the wall thickness increases with deposition time. The ordered TiO2 nanotubes have a large effective specific surface area, which not only provides a rich and effective oxygen adsorption site, but also provides a channel for the rapid transmission of electrons, so that the device has
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Bozhi Wu: Investigation, Data curation, Validation, Writing - original draft. Ming Zhou: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition. Xueting Zhang: Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation. Zhengpeng Fan: Formal analysis, Investigation. Kaiping Wang: Resources. Pengpeng Ma: Resources. Jinzhu Liu: Formal analysis. Maogen Su: Supervision, Project administration.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 61841402) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant 2017YFA0402300).
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2023, Journal of Alloys and CompoundsCollection of polymer bubble as a nanoscale membrane
2022, Surfaces and InterfacesCitation Excerpt :In this experiment, we use the airflow to enlarge the bubble, so that the wall thickness will be greatly reduced, the experimental setup is illustrated in Fig. 1. Wu, et al. found that a nanotube with a wall thickness less than 40 nm has an excellent UV response and a rapid response recovery speed [10]. The experimental process is illustrated in Fig. 2.