Asymmetric photoelectric property of transparent TiO2 nanotube films loaded with Au nanoparticles

Semitransparent composite films of Au loaded TiO2 nanotubes (TNT-Au) were prepared by sputtering Au nanoparticles on highly transparent TiO2 nanotubes films, which were fabricated directly on FTO glasses by anodizing the Ti film sputtered on the FTO glasses. Compared with pure TNT films, the prepared TNT-Au films possessed excellent absorption ability and high photocurrent response and improved photocatalytic activity under visible-light irradiation. It could be concluded that Au nanoparticles played important roles in improving the photoelectrochemical performance of TNT-Au films. Moreover, in this work, both sides of TNT-Au films were researched and compared owing to theirs semitransparency. It was firstly found that the photoelectric activity of TNT-Au composite films with back-side illumination was obviously superior to front-side illumination.