Nanocrystalline heterophase boundaries and asymmetric topographies for enhanced photocatalysts produced by dual ion beam-assisted deposition

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Authors

Fernando Echeverrigaray¹ , Fernando Alvarez¹

1. Campinas State University

Conference / event

Advances in Surfaces, Interfaces and Interphases (2022), May 2022 (Virtual)

Poster summary

Metastable inorganic solids, including intermetallics, hardened alloys, and polymorphs of transition metal/metal oxide, play key roles in synthesis of advanced functional materials for emerging applications in energy harvesting technologies. Towards controlled production of these metastable switchable materials, a combinatorial synthesis by in situ bottom-up and top-down methods based on ion beam sputtering/etching was employed. These growth processes prove to be a promising alternative to controlled defect engineering and symmetry selection by nanoscale patterning. A complex heterophase synthesized by the chemical intermingling of titanium/silicon oxides and titanium silicides is identified at the film-substrate interface and the existence of topographically asymmetric structures (i.e., randomly distributed nanoholes) obtained by normal-incidence ion irradiation. The formation mechanisms and concurring reactions are tuned by adjusting the transport growth and designing the (sub)surface-restructured dissimilarities in these hybrid interfaces. In view of their main characteristics, taken altogether, functional interface-based assemblies represent a promising alternative for high-performance (opto)electronic devices.

Keywords

Metastable inorganic solids, Heterophase interface, Asymmetric topographies, Defect engineering, Surface functionalization

Research areas

Material Sciences, Nanoengineering, Systems Science, Energy Engineering, Physics

References

1. Echeverrigaray, Fernando Graniero, et al. "Heterophase Interface and Surface Functionalization of TiOx/TiSix Metastable Nanofilms." Advanced Materials Interfaces 9.24 (2022): 2200799.
2. Hannula, M., et al. "Highly efficient charge separation in model Z-scheme TiO2/TiSi2/Si photoanode by micropatterned titanium silicide interlayer." Acta Materialia 174 (2019): 237-245.
3. Yang, Gaoyuan, et al. "Nanohole morphologies on photoresist surface produced by low-energy Ar+ ion bombardment under normal and near-normal incidence." Applied Surface Science 533 (2020): 147515.
4. Echeverrigaray, Fernando Graniero, Antonio Ricardo Zanatta, and F. Alvarez. "Reducible oxide and allotropic transition induced by hydrogen annealing: synthesis routes of TiO2 thin films to tailor optical response." Journal of Materials Research and Technology 12 (2021): 1623-1637.
5. Ali-Löytty, Harri, et al. "Diversity of TiO2: Controlling the molecular and electronic structure of atomic-layer-deposited black TiO2." ACS applied materials & interfaces 11.3 (2019): 2758-2762.
6. Hannula, Markku, et al. "Fabrication of topographically microstructured titanium silicide interface for advanced photonic applications." Scripta Materialia 119 (2016): 76-81.

Funding

1. São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (No. 2019/00757-0)

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 Echeverrigaray et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.