Facilely coupling CaTiO3 nanorods with Cu nanoparticles for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen evolution through efficient charge separation

Abstract

Photocatalytically splitting water to hydrogen production is a great potential for addressing the issue of energy crisis and environmental pollution. Metal-semiconductor hybrid photocatalyst has attracted increasing attention, and especially non-noble metal decoration is one of promising strategies to promote photoinduced electron-hole pairs separation for an efficient solar-to-hydrogen evolution. Herein, a facile solvothermal approach was successfully employed to prepare calcium titanate (CaTiO3) nanorods with decoration of copper particles. The composition and morphology characterization showed that the Cu particle was deposited on the surface of CaTiO3 nanorod. The as-synthesized CaTiO3/Cu composites exhibited promoted solar-to-hydrogen performance and their activities varied from copper loading amounts. The optimized CaTiO3/Cu-0.05 achieved a hydrogen evolution rate of 251 µmol g−1 h−1 , which was much higher than that of bare CaTiO3. Based on the photoluminescence spectra and photocurrent density measurements, it was proposed that efficient separation of photogenerated charges was achieved between the CaTiO3 nanorod and Cu nanoparticles, which promoted water splitting for H2 production. This work further confirms that metallic Cu decoration is an efficient approach to promote photocatalytic H2 production performance of semiconductor photocatalysts.