Stable Isolated Metal Atoms as Active Sites for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution |
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| Authors: | Yu Hang Li Wen Tao Yuan Prof Ying Zhou Dr Li Rong Zheng Prof Hai Feng Wang Prof? P Hu Prof Yun Wang Prof Hui Jun Zhao Prof Yong Wang Prof Hua Gui Yang |
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| Institution: | 1. Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237 (P.R. China), Fax: (+86)?21‐64252127;2. State Key Laboratory for Silicon Materials and Center for Electron Microscopy, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027 (P.R. China);3. State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500 (P.R. China);4. Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049 (P.R. China);5. State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, Centre for Computational Chemistry and Research Institute of Industrial Catalysis, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237 (P.R. China);6. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, BT95AG (UK);7. Centre for Clean Environment and Energy, Gold Coast Campus, Griffith University, Queensland 4222 (Australia) |
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| Abstract: | The process of using solar energy to split water to produce hydrogen assisted by an inorganic semiconductor is crucial for solving our energy crisis and environmental problems in the future. However, most semiconductor photocatalysts would not exhibit excellent photocatalytic activity without loading suitable co‐catalysts. Generally, the noble metals have been widely applied as co‐catalysts, but always agglomerate during the loading process or photocatalytic reaction. Therefore, the utilization efficiency of the noble co‐catalysts is still very low on a per metal atom basis if no obvious size effect exists, because heterogeneous catalytic reactions occur on the surface active atoms. Here, for the first time, we have synthesized isolated metal atoms (Pt, Pd, Rh, or Ru) stably by anchoring on TiO2, a model photocatalystic system, by a facile one‐step method. The isolated metal atom based photocatalysts show excellent stability for H2 evolution and can lead to a 6–13‐fold increase in photocatalytic activity over the metal clusters loaded on TiO2 by the traditional method. Furthermore, the configurations of isolated atoms as well as the originality of their unusual stability were analyzed by a collaborative work from both experiments and theoretical calculations. |
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| Keywords: | noble metals photocatalysis single atom titanium water splitting |
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