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Internal stress induced natural self-chemisorption of ZnO nanostructured films.

ABSTRACT: The energetic particles bombardment can produce large internal stress in the zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film, and it can be used to intentionally modify the surface characteristics of ZnO films. In this article, we observed that the internal stress increased from -1.62 GPa to -0.33 GPa, and the naturally wettability of the textured ZnO nanostructured films changed from hydrophobicity to hydrophilicity. According to analysis of surface chemical states, the naturally controllable wetting behavior can be attributed to hydrocarbon adsorbates on the nanostructured film surface, which is caused by tunable internal stress. On the other hand, the interfacial water molecules near the surface of ZnO nanostructured films have been identified as hydrophobic hydrogen structure by Fourier transform infrared/attenuated total reflection. Moreover, a remarkable near-band-edge emission peak shifting also can be observed in PL spectra due to the transition of internal stress state. Furthermore, our present ZnO nanostructured films also exhibited excellent transparency over 80% with a wise surface wetting switched from hydrophobic to hydrophilic states after exposing in ultraviolet (UV) surroundings. Our work demonstrated that the internal stress of the thin film not only induced natural wettability transition of ZnO nanostructured films, but also in turn affected the surface properties such as surface chemisorption.

SUBMITTER: Chi PW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5324092 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:One of the emerging and environmentally friendly technologies is the photoelectrochemical generation of green hydrogen; however, the cheap cost of production and the need for customizing photoelectrode properties are thought to be the main obstacles to the widespread adoption of this technology. The primary players in hydrogen production by photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, which is becoming more common on a worldwide basis, are solar renewable energy and widely available metal oxide based PEC electrodes. This study attempts to prepare nanoparticulate and nanorod-arrayed films to better understand how nanomorphology can impact structural, optical, and PEC hydrogen production efficiency, as well as electrode stability. Chemical bath deposition (CBD) and spray pyrolysis are used to create ZnO nanostructured photoelectrodes. Various characterization methods are used to investigate morphologies, structures, elemental analysis, and optical characteristics. The crystallite size of the wurtzite hexagonal nanorod arrayed film was 100.8 nm for the (002) orientation, while the crystallite size of nanoparticulate ZnO was 42.1 nm for the favored (101) orientation. The lowest dislocation values for (101) nanoparticulate orientation and (002) nanorod orientation are 5.6 × 10-4 and 1.0 × 10-4 dislocation/nm2, respectively. By changing the surface morphology from nanoparticulate to hexagonal nanorod arrangement, the band gap is decreased to 2.99 eV. Under white and monochromatic light irradiation, the PEC generation of H2 is investigated using the proposed photoelectrodes. The solar-to-hydrogen conversion rate of ZnO nanorod-arrayed electrodes was 3.72% and 3.12%, respectively, under 390 and 405 nm monochromatic light, which is higher than previously reported values for other ZnO nanostructures. The output H2 generation rates for white light and 390 nm monochromatic illuminations were 28.43 and 26.11 mmol.h-1cm-2, respectively. The nanorod-arrayed photoelectrode retains 96.6% of its original photocurrent after 10 reusability cycles, compared to 87.4% for the nanoparticulate ZnO photoelectrode. The computation of conversion efficiencies, H2 output rates, Tafel slope, and corrosion current, as well as the application of low-cost design methods for the photoelectrodes, show how the nanorod-arrayed morphology offers low-cost, high-quality PEC performance and durability.

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Internal stress induced natural self-chemisorption of ZnO nanostructured films.

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