Hybrid Metal/ZnO Nanostructures with Enhanced Catalytic and Sensing Properties Based on Self-Assembled Block Copolymer Templates: From Hierarchical to 3-D Superstructures

摘要

ZnO semiconductor having a wide band gap of 3.37 eV and a large exciton binding energy of 60 meV has been attracted tremendous attention due to their widespread use in optoelectronic device, solar cell, chemical sensors, and photocatalysts. Recently, there have been considerable interests in ZnO as photocatalysts since it has approximately same band gap energy as TiO2 (3.2 eV), which is one of the most widely used photocatalysts, and its photocatalytic activity can be expected to be similar to that of TiO2. In this regard, many efforts have been devoted to improve its photocatalytic activity. For instance, noble metal combined ZnO has been reported to exhibit excellent catalytic activity because metal nanoparticles (NPs) promote charge separation. Controlling the size, shape and internal structure of ZnO has been raised as curial factor to ensure superior photocatalytic property. Numerous routes have been proposed to generate ZnO nanostructures with target specific applications. As one of the nanofabrication tools, self-assembled block copolymers have been used as templates to derive tailored nanostructures.