title: Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) coated titanium oxide nanotube arrays with enhanced photo-electrochemical performance.
abstract: Herein, we report the successful formation of graphitic carbon nitride coated titanium oxide nanotube array thin films (g-C3N4/TiO2) via the facile thermal treatment of anodized Ti sheets over melamine. The proportion of C3N4 and TiO2 in the composite can be adjusted by changing the initial addition mass of melamine. The as-prepared samples are characterized by several techniques in order to understand the morphological, structural, compositional and optical properties. UV-vis absorption studies exhibit a remarkable red shift for the g-C3N4/TiO2 thin films as compared to the pristine TiO2 nanotubes. Importantly, the prepared composites exhibit an enhanced photocurrent and photo-potential under both UV-vis and visible light irradiation. Moreover, the observed maximum photo-conversion efficiency of the prepared composites is 1.59 times higher than that of the pristine TiO2 nanotubes. The optical and electrochemical impedance spectra analysis reveals that the better photo-electrochemical performance of the g-C3N4/TiO2 nanotubes is mainly due to the wider light absorption and reduced impedance compared to the bare TiO2 nanotube electrode. The presented work demonstrates a facile and simple method to fabricate g-C3N4/TiO2 nanotubes and clearly revealed that the introduction of g-C3N4 is a new and innovative approach to improve the photocurrent and photo-potential efficiencies of TiO2.
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, China. mingxuansun@sues.edu.cn smxalan@163.com.
authors.forename: Mingxuan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, China. mingxuansun@sues.edu.cn smxalan@163.com.
authors.forename: Yalin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.affiliation: Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200083, China.
authors.forename: Yuanyuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, China. mingxuansun@sues.edu.cn smxalan@163.com.
authors.forename: Shanfu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, China. mingxuansun@sues.edu.cn smxalan@163.com.
authors.forename: Zhishui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, College of Science and Arts, Najran University, P.O. Box 1988, Najran, 11001, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Promising Centre for Sensors and Electronic Devices (PCSED), Najran University, P.O. Box 1988, Najran, 11001, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. ahmadumar786@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ahmad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Umar