Controlled Thermal Annealing Tunes the Photoelectrochemical Properties of Nanochanneled Tin-Oxide Structures

Anna Palacios-Padrós, Marco Altomare, Kiyoung Lee, Ismael Díez-Pérez, Fausto Sanz, Patrik Schmuki

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

41 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the effect of thermal annealing conditions (up to 400°C) and atmospheres (air, Arand O2) on a newly developed nanochannel tin-oxide structure. The nanochanneled structures were prepared by self-organized anodization of metallic tin. Thermal annealing conditions have a strong impact on the crystallinity and content of Sn2+ defects present in the structure, and thus have a strong influence on the photoresponse characteristics of the films. Photocurrent measurements show that films annealed at 200°C in Ar atmosphere exhibit a band gap as low as 2.4eV and a photoresponse in the visible range. This effect is ascribed to a large content of Sn2+ defects in the structure and the improved crystallinity of the films annealed at this temperature. On the contrary, the Sn2+ content is decreased when annealing at 400°C under aerobic conditions, which correlates with a shift in the film band gap to 3.2eV, closer to the reported value for pure SnO2 (3.6eV).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1133-1137
Number of pages5
JournalChemElectroChem
Volume1
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jul 2014
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Keywords

  • Annealing
  • Doping
  • Nanostructures
  • Self-organizing anodization
  • Tin oxide

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