Synthesis of Hierarchical SnO2 Nanowire-TiO2 Nanorod Brushes Anchored to Commercially Available FTO-coated Glass Substrates

Derek R Miller; Sheikh A Akbar; Pat A Morris

doi:10.1007/s40820-017-0136-6

Synthesis of Hierarchical SnO₂ Nanowire-TiO₂ Nanorod Brushes Anchored to Commercially Available FTO-coated Glass Substrates

Nanomicro Lett. 2017;9(3):33. doi: 10.1007/s40820-017-0136-6. Epub 2017 Feb 21.

Authors

Derek R Miller¹, Sheikh A Akbar¹, Pat A Morris¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43212 USA.

Abstract

Growth of single-crystal SnO₂ nanowires using a fluorine-doped SnO₂ (FTO) thin film as both the source and substrate is demonstrated for the first time at relatively low temperature (580 °C) which preserves the integrity of the underlying glass support and improves scalability to devices. Furthermore, a microwave hydrothermal process is shown to grow TiO₂ nanorods on these nanowires to create a hierarchical nanoheterostructure that will lead to efficient photogenerated charge carrier separation and rapid transport of electrons to the substrate. This process simplifies nanowire growth by using commercially available and widely used FTO substrates without the need for an additional upstream Sn source and can be used as a high surface area host structure to many other hierarchical structures.

Keywords: Fluorine-doped SnO2 (FTO); Nanorod brush; Nanowire; SnO2; TiO2; Vapor–liquid–solid (VLS).