Tuning and Transfer of Slow Photons in Inverse Opal TiO2-BiVO4 Hetero-Composite Photonic Crystal for Visible Light Photocatalysis (conference Presentation)

Inverse opal (IO) photonic semiconductors are promising materials for photocatalysis, thanks to their slow photon properties that increase light harvesting. Here, we report, in IO TiO2-BiVO4 photonic structures, the ability not only to generate slow photons in the visible range but also to tune their frequencies and transfer their energy. Angle-resolved photocatalytic experiments revealed a 70% increase in activity in all IO structures compared to non-IO compact films and a further 20% increase when the slow photons were accurately tuned to BiVO4 electronic absorption. The synthesis and tuning strategies presented here can be extended to all solar energy conversion applications.