Synthesis of ZrO2:Fe nanostructures with visible-light driven H2 evolution activity
Abstract
In this paper, the ZrO2:Fe nanostructures with precisely controlled Fe doping contents are obtained by using a template method. The characterizations obviously show that the as-prepared samples have hollow sphere-like morphology and high crystalline quality. Furthermore, the band gap of the ZrO2:Fe nanostructures is facilely tunable by controlling the Fe content. In addition, the density-functional theory (DFT) calculation reveals that the formation of an impurity band in the band gap narrows the band gap of the Fe-doped ZrO2 nanostructures. The visible-light driven photocatalytic activity of ZrO2 nanostructures could be remarkably enhanced by doping the Fe impurity. This can be attributed to the red shift of the absorption edge and the trapping effect of the ZrO2:Fe nanostructures. The research results provide a general and effective method to synthesize different photocatalysts with enhanced visible-light driven H2 evolution activity.