Excellent fluorescence and photoelectricity of TiO2/Au/PS enabled by a synergistic carrier transfer effect

Herein, the titanium dioxide (TiO2), gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), and polystyrene (PS) composite (TiO2/Au/PS) with excellent fluorescent and photoelectric properties was fabricated. TiO2 nanorods array was first synthesized on FTO, followed by deposition of AuNPs and coated with PS successively. The TiO2/Au/PS composites shows much stronger fluorescent emission than that of their single component counterparts and any pairwise combination. Further, TiO2/Au/PS exhibit much stronger photogenerated current compared to TiO2/PS. It can be attributed to the synergistic enhancement effect due to the carrier transfer among them. Those observations demonstrated that TiO2/Au/PS composites is a promising photoelectric devices material.

Automated summary

In this study, a composite material of titanium dioxide (TiO2), gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), and polystyrene (PS) (TiO2/Au/PS) with excellent fluorescent and photoelectric properties was fabricated. The TiO2/Au/PS composite exhibited much stronger fluorescent emission compared to its single component counterparts and any pairwise combination. Furthermore, it also showed a stronger photogenerated current compared to TiO2/PS due to the synergistic enhancement effect.