An Experimental and Theoretical Study on the Effect of Silver Nanoparticles Concentration on the Structural, Morphological, Optical, and Electronic Properties of TiO2 Nanocrystals

Crystals

卷:11

Mohammed Benali Kanoun¹  Faheem Ahmed¹  Chawki Awada¹  Pierre-Francois Brevet²  Christian Jonin² 

[1] Department of Physics, College of Science, King Faisal University, P.O. Box 400, Al-Ahsa 31982, Saudi Arabia;

[2] Institut Lumière Matière, Université de Lyon, UMR 5306 CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CEDEX, 69622 Villeurbanne, France;

关键词: TiO₂;    nanocrystals;    band gap;    XRD;    Ag loading;    electronic structure;   

DOI  :  10.3390/cryst11121488

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In this work, pure and silver (Ag)-loaded TiO₂ nanocrystals (NCs) with various concentrations of Ag were prepared by soft chemical route and the effect of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) on the functional properties of TiO₂ was studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman studies confirmed that the synthesized product had single-phase nature and high crystalline quality. The crystallite size was decreased from 18.3 nm to 13.9 nm with the increasing in concentration of Ag in TiO₂ NCs. FESEM micrographs showed that the pure and AgNPs-loaded TiO₂ have spherical morphology and uniform size distribution with the size ranging from 20 to 10 nm. Raman spectroscopy performed on pure and AgNPs-loaded TiO₂ confirms the presence of anatase phase and AgNPs. Optical properties show the characteristics peaks of TiO₂ and the shifting of the peaks position was observed by changing the concentration of Ag. The tuning of bandgap was found to be observed with the increase in Ag, which could be ascribed to the synergistic effect between silver and TiO₂ NCs. Density functional theory calculations are carried out for different Ag series of doped TiO₂ lattices to simulate the structural and electronic properties. The analysis of the electronic structures show that Ag loading induces new localized gap states around the Fermi level. Moreover, the introduction of dopant states in the gap region owing to Ag doping can be convenient to shift the absorption edge of pristine TiO₂ through visible light.

【 授权许可】

Unknown