Structural Conversion of Cu-Titanate into Photoactive Plasmonic Cu-TiO₂ for H₂ Generation in Visible Light

Abstract

Visible light-driven photocatalysts based on TiO2 have significant potential for providing sustainable fuel for the future. Layered titanates, which have unique structures, are a focus of considerable research attention due to their ease of interconversion into new nanoarchitectures of TiO2 that have high photocatalytic performance. We describe here the synthesis of CuO nanostructures from the interconversion of copper titanate during the generation of TiO2 nanosheets. We further examined the in situ structural transformation of the CuO-loaded TiO2 nanosheets during photocatalytic hydrogen production from ammonia–borane (NH3·BH3; AB) under visible light and studied the impact of the reaction media and of photoirradiation on the catalyst’s final structure by characterizing the recovered catalyst using X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–vis, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses. The results show that the CuO nanoparticles are converted to metallic Cu nanoparticles, which photocatalyze the reaction through their in situ-formed plasmonic features. The potential role of the introduced plasmonic Cu nanoparticles in promoting charge separation and enhancing photocatalytic performance is also investigated.