Nitrogen ion irradiation effect on enhancing photocatalytic performance of CdTe/ZnO heterostructures

Abstract

To deal with the increasingly deteriorating environment problems, more and more harsh requirements are put forward for photocatalysis application. Building semiconductor heterostructures has been proven to be an efficient way to enhance photocatalytic performance. A kind of CdTe/ZnO heterostructures were synthesized by a hydrothermal and successive ionic layer absorption and reaction (SILAR) method and achieved obviously efficient photocatalytic performance. Moreover, after the N ion irradiation treatment, the photocatalytic activity was further enhanced, which can be ascribed to the introduction of oxygen vacancy defects. The photocatalytic performance enhancement mechanism by coupling constructing heterostructures and ion irradiation are further studied to give us an overall understanding on ZnO nanowires.

Keywords

N ion irradiation / CdTe/ZnO heterostructures / photocatalytic performance

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Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61176003).

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