In situ construction of sulfated TiO2 nanoparticles with TiOSO4 for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production

Abstract

Photocatalytic hydrogen production from water is a promising method to obtain clean energy in the future. In this work, the sulfated TiO₂ photocatalyst is successfully constructed in situ via a soft-templated method for photocatalytic water splitting to produce hydrogen. The content of sulfate species in TiO₂ can be tuned by changing the amount of the surfactant. The photocatalyst with the appropriate content of sulfate ions exhibits an apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) of 3.9% at 365 nm and a high hydrogen production rate of 24.32 mmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹, which is 1.65 times that of commercial TiO₂ (P25). The optimized photocatalyst has excellent photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution benefitting from the presence of sulfate ions on the surface of TiO₂, large surface area and oxygen vacancies, which facilitates the rapid migration of photo-generated electrons to its surface and the improvement of the separation efficiency of photo-generated carriers. This work may inspire the rational design and the development of high-efficiency photocatalysts.