TY - JOUR
T1 - Manipulating multi-spectral slow photons in bilayer inverse opal TiO2@BiVO4 composites for highly enhanced visible light photocatalysis
AU - Lourdu Madanu, Thomas
AU - Chaabane, Laroussi
AU - Mouchet, Sébastien R
AU - Deparis, Olivier
AU - Su, Bao-Lian
N1 - Funding Information:
The Thomas Lourdu Madanu thanks the Europe Occidentale Francophone (EOF) and Andhra (India) Jesuit provinces for their support in realizing this work. Sébastien R. Mouchet was supported by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS) (91400/1.B.309.18F), the Maturation Fund of the Walloon Region, and a BEWARE Fellowship (Convention n◦2110034) of the Walloon Region (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the European Union - COFUND - contract 847587), as a Postdoctoral Researcher. The authors also acknowledge the Physico-Chemical Characterization (PC 2 ) Technology Platform ( https://platforms.unamur.be/pc2 ) and the Electron Microscopy Service (SME) of UNamur ( http://www.unamur.be/en/sevmel ), which is a member of the Morphology - Imaging (MORPH-IM) Technology Platform of UNamur.
Funding Information:
The Thomas Lourdu Madanu thanks the Europe Occidentale Francophone (EOF) and Andhra (India) Jesuit provinces for their support in realizing this work. Sébastien R. Mouchet was supported by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS) (91400/1.B.309.18F), the Maturation Fund of the Walloon Region, and a BEWARE Fellowship (Convention n◦2110034) of the Walloon Region (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the European Union - COFUND - contract 847587), as a Postdoctoral Researcher. The authors also acknowledge the Physico-Chemical Characterization (PC2) Technology Platform ( https://platforms.unamur.be/pc2) and the Electron Microscopy Service (SME) of UNamur ( http://www.unamur.be/en/sevmel), which is a member of the Morphology - Imaging (MORPH-IM) Technology Platform of UNamur.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2023/10
Y1 - 2023/10
N2 - Manipulation of light has been proved to be a promising strategy to increase light harvesting in solar-to-chemical energy conversion, especially in photocatalysis. Inverse opal (IO) photonic structures are highly promising for light manipulation as their periodic dielectric structures enable them to slow down light and localize it within the structure, thereby improving light harvesting and photocatalytic efficiency. However, slow photons are confined to narrow wavelength ranges and hence limit the amount of energy that can be captured through light manipulation. To address this challenge, we synthesized bilayer IO TiO
2@BiVO
4 structures that manifested two distinct stop band gap (SBG) peaks, arising from different pore sizes in each layer, with slow photons available at either edge of each SBG. In addition, we achieved precise control over the frequencies of these multi-spectral slow photons through pore size and incidence angle variations, that enabled us to tune their wavelengths to the electronic absorption of the photocatalyst for optimal light utilization in aqueous phase visible light photocatalysis. This first proof of concept involving multi-spectral slow photon utilization enabled us to achieve up to 8.5 times and 2.2 times higher photocatalytic efficiencies than the corresponding non-structured and monolayer IO photocatalysts respectively. Through this work, we have successfully and significantly improved light harvesting efficiency in slow photon-assisted photocatalysis, the principles of which can be extended to other light harvesting applications.
AB - Manipulation of light has been proved to be a promising strategy to increase light harvesting in solar-to-chemical energy conversion, especially in photocatalysis. Inverse opal (IO) photonic structures are highly promising for light manipulation as their periodic dielectric structures enable them to slow down light and localize it within the structure, thereby improving light harvesting and photocatalytic efficiency. However, slow photons are confined to narrow wavelength ranges and hence limit the amount of energy that can be captured through light manipulation. To address this challenge, we synthesized bilayer IO TiO
2@BiVO
4 structures that manifested two distinct stop band gap (SBG) peaks, arising from different pore sizes in each layer, with slow photons available at either edge of each SBG. In addition, we achieved precise control over the frequencies of these multi-spectral slow photons through pore size and incidence angle variations, that enabled us to tune their wavelengths to the electronic absorption of the photocatalyst for optimal light utilization in aqueous phase visible light photocatalysis. This first proof of concept involving multi-spectral slow photon utilization enabled us to achieve up to 8.5 times and 2.2 times higher photocatalytic efficiencies than the corresponding non-structured and monolayer IO photocatalysts respectively. Through this work, we have successfully and significantly improved light harvesting efficiency in slow photon-assisted photocatalysis, the principles of which can be extended to other light harvesting applications.
U2 - 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.05.124
DO - 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.05.124
M3 - Article
C2 - 37253292
SN - 0021-9797
VL - 647
SP - 233
EP - 245
JO - Journal of Colloid and Interface Science
JF - Journal of Colloid and Interface Science
ER -