Hydrogenated heterojunction of boron nitride and titania enables the photocatalytic generation of H2 in the absence of noble metal catalysts

Abstract

The increasing need for new materials capable of solar fuel production is central to the development of green energy economy. Utilizing solar energy for hydrogen generation is a great challenge due to inefficient light utilization and fast charge recombination. In this work, disorder-engineered black H-TiO2@BN with Ti-B chemically bonded interfaces was synthesized by employing BN nanosheets as the photocatalyst support. The hybridization of TiO2 with BN and hydrogenated thermal treatment work synergistically to enable the photocatalytic H2 production without noble metal cocatalysts. The hybrid photocatalyst markedly enhanced light absorption, significantly retarded charge pair recombination, facilitated interfacial electron transfer, and lowered interfacial charge transfer resistance. As a result, the photocatalytic H2 production activity of H-TiO2@BN that consisted of earth-abundant elements only was comparable to that of Pt-TiO2. The present hybrid engineering for the efficient charge separation and transfer via the formation of the interfacial chemical bonds should provide a useful methodology for designing the new types of hybrid photocatalysts.