Abstract
Over the past decades, the fabrication and application of hybrid composites that integrate two or more nanoscale components have received much attention. The combination of noble metal and semiconductor such as Au-TiO2 is one of the most popular heterostructures because of the low cost, nontoxicity, suitable optical property and chemical stability, which can be used in a wide variety of applications. More recently, the addition of metal calcogenides, has been shown to effectively enhance the harvest efficiency of visible light of TiO2-Au. Silver selenide (Ag2Se) is a metal calcogenide with narrow bang gap which has special electronic and optical properties to extend the absorption wavelength of Au-TiO2. In this study, we synthesized the ternary TiO2-Au-Ag2Se nanorods using a facile method. The 1-dimentional TiO2 nanorods were first fabricated in nonaqueous solution at 270 ºC, and were then mixed with AuAg alloy seeds to form TiO2-Au-Ag2Se nanorods in the presence of Se powder and 1-dodecanethiol. The morphology as well as microstructures of TiO2-Au-Ag2Se nanorods have been characterized. The TEM images and XRD patterns showed that the as-prepared TiO2 nanorods were mainly in anatase phase and the average dimension was 2.8 32 nm. In addition, the particle size of dumbbell-likeAu-Ag2Se was 8.5 nm, where Au was in fcc structure and Ag2Se was in alpha form. The TiO2-Au-Ag2Se exhibited a wide absorption wavelength range of 300-1500 nm. In addition, bisphenol A was found to be rapidly decomposed by TiO2-Au-Ag2Se under visible light, showing that the ternary TiO2-Au-Ag2Se nanorods are promising materials for potential applications in the fields of optoelectronics, water splitting and photodegradation.