Enhanced light-harvesting by plasmonic hollow gold nanospheres for photovoltaic performance

Hao Ding; Jindian Lv; Huaping Wu; Guozhong Chai; Aiping Liu

doi:10.1098/rsos.171350

Enhanced light-harvesting by plasmonic hollow gold nanospheres for photovoltaic performance

R Soc Open Sci. 2018 Jan 24;5(1):171350. doi: 10.1098/rsos.171350. eCollection 2018 Jan.

Authors

Hao Ding¹, Jindian Lv², Huaping Wu¹, Guozhong Chai¹, Aiping Liu^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of E&M, Ministry of Education, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, People's Republic of China.
² Center for Optoelectronics Materials and Devices, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, People's Republic of China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

A 'sandwich'-structured TiO₂NR/HGN/CdS photoanode was successfully fabricated by the electrophoretic deposition of hollow gold nanospheres (HGNs) on the surface of TiO₂ nanorods (NRs). The HGNs presented a wide surface plasmon resonance character in the visible region from 540 to 630 nm, and further acted as the scatter elements and light energy 'antennas' to trap the local-field light near the TiO₂NR/CdS layer, resulting in the increase of the light harvesting. An outstanding enhancement in the photochemical behaviour of TiO₂NR/HGN/CdS photoanodes was attained by the contribution of HGNs in increasing the light absorption and the number of electron-hole pairs of photosensitive semiconductors. The optimized photochemical performance of TiO₂NR/HGN/CdS photoanodes by using plasmonic HGNs demonstrated their potential application in energy conversion devices.

Keywords: TiO2 nanorod; hollow gold nanospheres; photochemical performance; solar cell; surface plasmon resonance.