TY - JOUR
T1 - A cascading gradient pore microstructured photoanode with enhanced photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities
AU - Li, Lin
AU - Chen, Rong
AU - Zhu, Xun
AU - Liao, Qiang
AU - Wang, Hong
AU - An, Liang
AU - Zhang, Muxing
N1 - The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51222603, No. 51276208, No. 51325602, and No. 51576021), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2015AA043503), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-12-0591), and the Chongqing Graduate Student Research Innovation Project (No. CYB14012).
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - In this work, a novel photoanode with a cascading gradient pore microstructure is proposed to enhance photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities, which consists of a nanocrystalline TiO2layer synthesized by the sol–gel method, a microporous layer, and a macroporous layer formed by adding PEG and PMMA as the template, respectively. The gradient pore microstructure can not only enhance the mass and photon transfer and improve the light utilization, but also increase the electrical conductivity and restrain the recombination of photoexcited electron–hole pairs. Furthermore, the cascading design helps to establish tighter interparticle connections between layers. Because of these merits, it has been found that the cascading gradient pore microstructured photoanode exhibited a 63% improvement over the conventional photoanode in terms of photoelectrochemical activity. This new design also enhanced the photocatalytic activity, leading to a much higher methylene blue degradation efficiency (76.7%) than that of conventional photoanodes (62.5%). The effect of the PMMA/TiO2ratio on the structure and performance of the proposed photoanode was also investigated. The highest performance was achieved with a PMMA/TiO2ratio of 1:1. The obtained results establish a new avenue for designing the photoanodes of photoelectrochemical systems.
AB - In this work, a novel photoanode with a cascading gradient pore microstructure is proposed to enhance photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities, which consists of a nanocrystalline TiO2layer synthesized by the sol–gel method, a microporous layer, and a macroporous layer formed by adding PEG and PMMA as the template, respectively. The gradient pore microstructure can not only enhance the mass and photon transfer and improve the light utilization, but also increase the electrical conductivity and restrain the recombination of photoexcited electron–hole pairs. Furthermore, the cascading design helps to establish tighter interparticle connections between layers. Because of these merits, it has been found that the cascading gradient pore microstructured photoanode exhibited a 63% improvement over the conventional photoanode in terms of photoelectrochemical activity. This new design also enhanced the photocatalytic activity, leading to a much higher methylene blue degradation efficiency (76.7%) than that of conventional photoanodes (62.5%). The effect of the PMMA/TiO2ratio on the structure and performance of the proposed photoanode was also investigated. The highest performance was achieved with a PMMA/TiO2ratio of 1:1. The obtained results establish a new avenue for designing the photoanodes of photoelectrochemical systems.
KW - Cascading gradient pore microstructure
KW - Photoanodes
KW - Photocatalytic fuel cell
KW - Photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic activities
KW - PMMA/TiO ratio 2
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84994718522&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jcat.2016.09.017
DO - 10.1016/j.jcat.2016.09.017
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0021-9517
VL - 344
SP - 411
EP - 419
JO - Journal of Catalysis
JF - Journal of Catalysis
ER -