Surface Morphology-Dependent Functionality of Titanium Dioxide–Nickel Oxide Nanocomposite Semiconductors
Department of Optoelectronics and Materials Technology, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung 20224, Taiwan
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Nanomaterials 2019, 9(12), 1651; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano9121651
Received: 28 September 2019
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Revised: 8 November 2019
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Accepted: 19 November 2019
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Published: 21 November 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Nanomaterials for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Sensing Applications)
In this study, TiO2–NiO heterostructures were synthesized by combining hydrothermal and chemical bath deposition methods. The post-annealing temperature was varied to control the surface features of the TiO2–NiO heterostructures. TiO2–NiO heterostructures annealed at 350 °C comprised NiO-nanosheet-decorated TiO2 nanostructures (NST), whereas those annealed at 500 °C comprised NiO-nanoparticle-decorated TiO2 nanostructures (NPT). The NPT exhibited higher photodegradation activity than the NST in terms of methylene blue (MB) degradation under irradiation. Structural analyses demonstrated that the NPT had a higher surface adsorption capability for MB dyes and superior light-harvesting ability; thus, they exhibited greater photodegradation ability toward MB dyes. In addition, the NST showed high gas-sensing responses compared with the NPT when exposed to acetone vapor. This result was attributable to the higher number of oxygen-deficient regions on the surfaces of the NST, which increased the amount of surface-chemisorbed oxygen species. This resulted in a relatively large resistance variation for the NST when exposed to acetone vapor.
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Keywords:
surface; morphology; semconductors; functionality
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MDPI and ACS Style
Liang, Y.-C.; Xu, N.-C.; Chiang, K.-J. Surface Morphology-Dependent Functionality of Titanium Dioxide–Nickel Oxide Nanocomposite Semiconductors. Nanomaterials 2019, 9, 1651. https://doi.org/10.3390/nano9121651
AMA Style
Liang Y-C, Xu N-C, Chiang K-J. Surface Morphology-Dependent Functionality of Titanium Dioxide–Nickel Oxide Nanocomposite Semiconductors. Nanomaterials. 2019; 9(12):1651. https://doi.org/10.3390/nano9121651
Chicago/Turabian StyleLiang, Yuan-Chang, Nian-Cih Xu, and Kai-Jen Chiang. 2019. "Surface Morphology-Dependent Functionality of Titanium Dioxide–Nickel Oxide Nanocomposite Semiconductors" Nanomaterials 9, no. 12: 1651. https://doi.org/10.3390/nano9121651
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