title: Facile fabrication of hierarchical TiO2 nanobelt/ZnO nanorod heterogeneous nanostructure: an efficient photoanode for water splitting.
abstract: The TiO2 nanobelt/ZnO nanorod composite photoelectrodes with flower-like and/or grass-like microstructures have been fabricated via a facile solution growth routine, just by controlling the treatment of the TiO2 nanobelt substrate. For the flower-like composite, the ZnO nanorods disperse orientationally on TiO2 nanobelt films, while for the grass-like one, ZnO nanorods grow disorderly like grass on the TiO2 nanobelt film surface. Furthermore, quasi-Fermi energy level changes of both photoelectrodes have been quantitatively characterized by the surface photovoltage based on the Kelvin probe, which clearly reveals the efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole separation. Owing to the decrease of quasi-Fermi energy level, the flower-like TiO2 nanobelt/ZnO nanorod heterogeneous nanostructure presents a high efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole separation. Therefore, the flower-like TiO2 nanobelt/ZnO nanorod heterogeneous nanostructure photoelectrode has achieved a better performance of water splitting compared with the grass-like TiO2 nanobelt/ZnO nanorod one.
authors: Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Heilongjiang University , Harbin 150080, People's Republic of China.
authors: Kai
authors: K
authors: Pan
authors: Youzhen
authors: Y
authors: Dong
authors: Wei
authors: W
authors: Zhou
authors: Qingjiang
authors: Q
authors: Pan
authors: Ying
authors: Y
authors: Xie
authors: Tengfeng
authors: T
authors: Xie
authors: Guohui
authors: G
authors: Tian
authors: Guofeng
authors: G
authors: Wang