Surfactant Assisted Au Nanoparticle Layering in Titanium Oxide Thin Films

摘要

Au Nanoparticle (NP) decorated TiO_2 thin films, prepared by a unique surfactant assisted 2D self-assembling technique with molecular level control, showed significant decrease in optical band gap as well as enhanced crystallinity compared to its sol-gel prepared pristine counterpart. Spin coated Au NP overlayers on titania in absence of surfactant, on the other hand, had no appreciable effect on either band gap or crystal structure compared to undoped TiO_2 films. Apart from exhibiting band gap tuning of TiO_2, this cheap, scalable technique of surfactant aided deposition of 2D layers of Au NPs on semiconducting oxides, may be used for development of multilayered structures with promising light harvesting and unidirectional energy transfer (LUET) applications.