Structural conversion of Cu-Titanate into photoactive plasmonic Cu-Tio(2)for H(2)generation in visible light

Abstract

Visible light-driven photocatalysts based on TiO2have significant potentialfor providing sustainable fuel for the future. Layered titanates, which have unique structures,are a focus of considerable research attention due to their ease of interconversion into newnanoarchitectures of TiO2that have high photocatalytic performance. We describe here thesynthesis of CuO nanostructures from the interconversion of copper titanate during thegeneration of TiO2nanosheets. We further examined thein situstructural transformation ofthe CuO-loaded TiO2nanosheets during photocatalytic hydrogen production fromammonia-borane (NH3middotBH3; AB) under visible light and studied the impact of thereaction media and of photoirradiation on the catalyst'sfinal structure by characterizing therecovered catalyst using X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-vis, and transmission electronmicroscopy (TEM) analyses. The results show that the CuO nanoparticles are converted tometallic Cu nanoparticles, which photocatalyze the reaction through theirin situ-formedplasmonic features. The potential role of the introduced plasmonic Cu nanoparticles inpromoting charge separation and enhancing photocatalytic performance is also investigated.