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TiO2-Based Double-Shelled Homojunction Hollow Spheres Decorated with Spatially Separated Cocatalyst for Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

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Abstract

Efficient separation of photogenerated carriers and surface reactions is the crucial factor in achieving successful photocatalytic water splitting. Herein, a novel Pt@Co-T@T@M hollow sphere was prepared by a template-assisted method. Pt was anchored on the inner surface of Co-doped TiO2 shell, serving as electron collectors and active sites for reduction reaction, while MnOX was immobilized on the outer surface of TiO2 shell for oxidation reaction. Under simulated one-sun (AM 1.5G) illumination, the as-prepared Pt@Co-T@T@M hollow spheres exhibited a remarkable hydrogen evolution rate of 7.304 mmol g−1 h−1, which is 114 times higher than that of T@T hollow spheres. The exceptional photocatalytic water-splitting performance is attributed to the synergistic effect between homojunction and spatial dual-cocatalyst, which promotes enhanced spatial separation of photogenerated carriers and reduces recombination. This study highlights the importance of precise and rational control over photocatalyst structure for achieving highly efficient water splitting.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21878254) and the Projects of Talents Recruitment of Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology (2018rc49).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemical Engineering, Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming, 525000, People’s Republic of China

    Feng Chen

  2. College of Chemical Engineering, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, 411105, People’s Republic of China

    Xinyi Hou & Caixian Zhao

  3. College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, People’s Republic of China

    Peixin Jiao

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Contributions

FC: conceived the presented idea, conceptualization, methodology, data curation, writing-reviewing, and editing; XH: conducted the experiments, characterizations, and writing-original draft preparation; PJ: conducted the experiments, and characterizations; CZ: conceived the presented idea, writing-reviewing and editing of the revised manuscript.

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Correspondence to Feng Chen or Caixian Zhao.

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Chen, F., Hou, X., Jiao, P. et al. TiO2-Based Double-Shelled Homojunction Hollow Spheres Decorated with Spatially Separated Cocatalyst for Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution. Catal Lett (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-024-04611-3

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