Visible light photoelectrochemical properties of N-doped TiO 2-nanorod arrays from TiN

Abstract

N-doped TiO2-nanorod arrays (NRAs) were prepared by annealing the TiN nanorod arrays (NRAs) which were deposited by using oblique angle deposition (OAD) technique. The TiN NRAs were annealed at 330°C for different times (5, 15, 30, 60, and 120 min). The band gaps of annealed TiN NRAs (i.e., N-doped TiO2-NRAs) show a significant variance with annealing time, and can be controlled readily by varying annealing time. All of the N-doped TiO2-NRAs exhibit an enhancement in photocurrent intensity in visible light compared with that of pure TiO2-and TiN, and the one annealed for 15 min shows the maximum photocurrent intensity owning to the optimal N dopant concentration. The results show that the N-doped TiO 2-NRAs, of which the band gap can be tuned easily, are a very promising material for application in photocatalysis. © 2013 Zheng Xie et al.