A novel thermal exfoliation strategy for the fabrication of high-quality Ag/TiO2 nanosnowman nanoparticles with enhanced photocatalytic properties

Abstract

A novel thermal exfoliation strategy has been proposed to synthesize high-quality Ag/TiO₂ head–body nanosnowman nanoparticles (AgTiNPs, with the head and body being single Ag and TiO₂ nanoparticles, respectively) for the first time. The obtained samples were characterized with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) and photoluminescence (PL) emission spectra, etc. Results show that loaded Ag nanoparticles could exfoliate with a part of an adjacent caducous TiO₂ nanosheet during calcination treatment, thereby fabricating high-quality Ag/TiO₂ head–body nanosnowman nanoparticles. The prepared AgTiNPs show a uniform particle size, a high dispersion and enhanced interactions between Ag heads and TiO₂ bodies. Compared with calcined Ag/DHS, AgTiNPs exhibit an enhanced photocatalytic performance in the degradation of RhB and solar H₂ production due to improved charge carrier separation. The proposed thermal exfoliation strategy might open up a new method for the fabrication of other semiconductor–metal nanosnowman nanoparticles with enhanced photochemical properties.