Abstract—Three types of photocatalytic TiO2 thin films with different structures, nanorods (NR-TiO2), mesoporous (MP-TiO2), and bulk structure (BK-TiO2), were prepared by evaporation induced self-assembling process or electron beam induced deposition method. The post-calcination treatment at 400oC was performed for all TiO2 thin films to induce their crystallinity. The TiO2 structure on the film properties were studied by material characterizations. The photoelectrochemical characteristics of the TiO2 films were investigated using a potentiostat. Under UV-light irradiation, a highest net photocurrent of 0.747 mA was observed for the NR-TiO2 thin film. To demonstrate the photoactivity of the prepared TiO2 thin films, water-splitting reactions were conducted. The yields of hydrogen and oxygen were 35.8 and 17.2 μmole, respectively after 8 hr. of UV-light irradiation on NR-TiO2.
Index Terms—H-type reactor, nanorods, hydrogen, photocatalytic water splitting, renewable energy.
The authors are with Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan (e-mail:cswu@ntu.edu.tw).
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Cite: Chao-Wei Huang, Chi-Hung Liao, and Jeffrey C. S. Wu, "Photocatalytic Separate Evolution of Hydrogen and Oxygen over Highly Ordered Nanorods and Bulk TiO2 Thin Films," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-5, 2013.
