Journal
PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY CHEMICAL PHYSICS
Volume 20, Issue 22, Pages 15149-15157Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c8cp01680a
Keywords
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21473078, 21411140235, 21327803]
- Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China [B201309, B201418]
- Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Heilongjiang Provincial University [1253-NCET-023]
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Ag simultaneously deposited and doped TiO2 (Ag-TiO2) hybrid nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared via a sol-hydrothermal method, as both a sensitive surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate and a superior photocatalyst for the first time. Ag-TiO2 hybrid NPs exhibit excellent SERS performance for several probe molecules and the enhancement factor is calculated to be 1.86 x 10(5). The detection limit of the 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4-MBA) probe on the Ag-TiO2 substrate is 1 x 10(-9) mol L-1, which is four orders of magnitude lower than that on pure TiO2 as a consequence of the synergistic effects of TiO2 and Ag. This is the highest SERS sensitivity among the reported semiconductor substrates and even comparable to noble metal substrates, and a SERS enhancement mechanism from the synergistic contribution of the semiconductor and noble metal was proposed. And importantly, the Ag-TiO2 hybrid shows excellent photocatalytic degradation activity for the detected species under UV light irradiation at lower concentration conditions, even for the hard to degrade 4-MBA molecule. This makes the Ag-TiO2 hybrid promising as a dual-function platform for both highly sensitive SERS detection and photocatalytic degradation of a pollutant system. Moreover, it also proves that the Ag-TiO2 hybrid can serve as a promising recyclable SERS-active substrate by virtue of its photocatalytic self-cleaning properties for some specific applications, for instance comparative studies of different species on the same SERS platform, in addition to the economic benefit.
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