Preparation and characterization of mesoporous TiO2-ZnO thin films

We reported the preparation of well-organized mesoporous TiO2-ZnO thin films with titanium isoproxide and zinc acetate dihydrate as the inorganic precursors and triblock copolymer( Pluronic P123) as the template via a sol-gel and spin-coating process. The molar fraction of ZnO could be tuned in the mesoporous TiO2-ZnO thin film by varying the molar fraction of Zn precursor in the range from 0 to 50%. The resulting films were characterized and analyzed via small-angle X-ray diffraction( SAXRD), scanning electron microscopy ( SEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy ( HRTEM), energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS), UV-Vis absorption spectrum and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy ( XPS). Both EDS and XPS demonstrate that the as-synthesized mesoporous thin films were made of TiO2 and ZnO. With ZnO molar fraction increased, the optical band gap of the thin films varied from 3.45 eV to 3.58 eV.