Nickel phthalocyanine@graphene oxide/TiO2 as an efficient degradation catalyst of formic acid toward hydrogen production

Sajjad Keshipour; Shima Mohammad-Alizadeh

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-95382-z

Nickel phthalocyanine@graphene oxide/TiO₂ as an efficient degradation catalyst of formic acid toward hydrogen production

Sci Rep. 2021 Aug 9;11(1):16148. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-95382-z.

Authors

Sajjad Keshipour¹, Shima Mohammad-Alizadeh²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nanotechnology, Faculty of Science, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran. S.Keshipour@urmia.ac.ir.
² Department of Nanotechnology, Faculty of Science, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran.

Abstract

A new photocatalytic system was introduced to degrade formic acid toward hydrogen production using nickel(II) phthalocyanine (NiPc)@graphene oxide (GO)/TiO₂ as the catalyst. Synthesis of NiPc was performed in the presence of GO leading to a homogeneous distribution of NiPc on GO. While TiO₂ promoted the reaction using each of NiPc and GO under visible light, the reaction was carried out with superior rate using NiPc@GO/TiO₂. In this reaction, GO minimized the band gap of TiO₂ through contributing its Fermi levels and NiPc escalated the photocatalytic reaction rate as a sensitizing agent. The reaction released hydrogen with the rate of 1.38 mmol h^-1 and TOF = 77 h^-1.