construction of sulfated TiO nanoparticles with TiOSO for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production

Photocatalytic hydrogen production from water is a promising method to obtain clean energy in the future. In this work, the sulfated TiO 2 photocatalyst is successfully constructed in situ via a soft-templated method for photocatalytic water splitting to produce hydrogen. The content of sulfate species in TiO 2 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 TiO 2 (P25). The optimized photocatalyst has excellent photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution benefitting from the presence of sulfate ions on the surface of TiO 2 , 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. Sulfated TiO 2 acts as an efficient catalyst for photocatalytic hydrogen production under simulated sunlight irradiation.