Direct Z-scheme MgIn2S4/TiO2 heterojunction for enhanced photocathodic protection of metals under visible light

To improve the photocathodic protection performance of traditional TiO2 photoanodes for metals, constructing a Z-scheme heterojunction is one of the most promising and creative strategies. Herein, we fabricated a novel Z-scheme MgIn2S4 nanosheets/TiO2 nanotube nanocomposite through anodization and hydrothermal method. The optimized Z-scheme MgIn2S4/TiO2 nanocomposites exhibited stronger visible light absorption, higher separation efficiency of photoelectrons and photocathodic protection performances in comparison to pure TiO2. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the Z-scheme heterojunction and oxygen vacancies jointly improved the separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs and visible light absorption capacity, thereby improving the photoelectric conversion performance of the MgIn2S4/TiO2 nanocomposites. Furthermore, the influence of the precursor solution concentration on the photocathodic protection performances of the composites was investigated. As a result, when the concentration of magnesium source in the precursor solution was 0.06 mmol, the prepared MgIn2S4/TiO2-0.06 displayed the best photocathodic protection performance. In addition, the hydroxyl radicals (•OH) generated in the electron spin resonance (ESR) experiment verified the Z-scheme heterojunction mechanism of the MgIn2S4/TiO2 composite, and also demonstrated the excellent redox performance of the composite. This work provides valuable reference for the construction of high-performance Z-scheme heterojunctions for photocathode protection of metals.

Ferrocene-Sensitized Titanium-Oxo Clusters with Effective Visible Light Absorption and Excellent Photoelectrochemical Activity

Sensitized Ti-oxo clusters have attracted growing attention as analogous molecular mode compounds of dye-sensitized titanium dioxide solar cells. However, reports on the introduction of metal complexes as photosensitizers into Ti-oxo...

In-situ hybridization of ZnO nanorod and graphene oxide with enhancing photocatalytic activity

In this work, nanohybridization of ZnO nanorod and graphene oxide (GO) were prepared by a facile hydrothermal method. The effects of GO on crystal structure and surface morphology of ZnO were revealed by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The presence of GO in the composite resulted the ZnO nanorod more uniform which its diameter size was decreased. Optical properties characterized by UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS) showed that the ZnO/GO composite has the narrower bandgap value and the better visible-light absorption characterisitics in compare to the bare ZnO. As a result, the photocatalytic ability in degradation of methylene blue under solar irradiation was enhanced in the ZnO/GO composite.