Design and Development of Novel Nanostructured Visible-Light Active Photoelectrodes based on TiO2 Nanorods for Solar Hydrogen Generation

Abstract

Single crystalline rutile TiO₂ nanorods were synthesized by using low temperature hydrothermal synthesis method. Activity of the TiO₂ nanorods in the visible light range was achieved by introducing low bandgap semiconductor materials, such as CdS, CdSe, and CdS/CdSe and their photoelectrochemical performances were comparatively investigated. Morphological, microstructural and photocatalytic characterization results revealed that TiO₂/CdS/CdSe composite photoelectrode demonstrated superior photocatalytic performance compared to others owing to single crystalline TiO₂ core component as well as favorable band alignment of the sensitized CdSe/CdSe nanoparticles.