Hydrogen production by tuning the photonic band gap with the electronic band gap of TiO₂

G I N Waterhouse; A K Wahab; M Al-Oufi; V Jovic; D H Anjum; D Sun-Waterhouse; J Llorca; H Idriss

doi:10.1038/srep02849

Hydrogen production by tuning the photonic band gap with the electronic band gap of TiO₂

Sci Rep. 2013 Oct 10:3:2849. doi: 10.1038/srep02849.

Authors

G I N Waterhouse¹, A K Wahab, M Al-Oufi, V Jovic, D H Anjum, D Sun-Waterhouse, J Llorca, H Idriss

Affiliation

¹ School of Chemical Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Abstract

Tuning the photonic band gap (PBG) to the electronic band gap (EBG) of Au/TiO2 catalysts resulted in considerable enhancement of the photocatalytic water splitting to hydrogen under direct sunlight. Au/TiO2 (PBG-357 nm) photocatalyst exhibited superior photocatalytic performance under both UV and sunlight compared to the Au/TiO2 (PBG-585 nm) photocatalyst and both are higher than Au/TiO2 without the 3 dimensionally ordered macro-porous structure materials. The very high photocatalytic activity is attributed to suppression of a fraction of electron-hole recombination route due to the co-incidence of the PBG with the EBG of TiO2 These materials that maintain their activity with very small amount of sacrificial agents (down to 0.5 vol.% of ethanol) are poised to find direct applications because of their high activity, low cost of the process, simplicity and stability.