In situ construction of sulfated TiO₂ nanoparticles with TiOSO₄ for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production

Photocatalytic hydrogen production from water is a promising method to obtain clean energy in the future. In this work, the sulfated TiO2 photocatalyst is successfully constructed in situ via a soft-templated method for photocatalytic water splitting to produce hydrogen. The content of sulfate species in TiO2 can be tuned by changing the amount of the surfactant. The photocatalyst with the appropriate content of sulfate ions exhibits an apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) of 3.9% at 365 nm and a high hydrogen production rate of 24.32 mmol h-1 g-1, which is 1.65 times that of commercial TiO2 (P25). The optimized photocatalyst has excellent photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution benefitting from the presence of sulfate ions on the surface of TiO2, large surface area and oxygen vacancies, which facilitates the rapid migration of photo-generated electrons to its surface and the improvement of the separation efficiency of photo-generated carriers. This work may inspire the rational design and the development of high-efficiency photocatalysts.