Function-reversible facets enabling SrTiO₃ nanocrystals for improved photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Abstract

It has been widely reported that, for faceted nanocrystals, the two adjacent facets with different band levels contribute to promoted charge separation, and provide active sites for photocatalytic reduction and oxidation reaction, respectively. In such cases, only one family of facets can be used for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Herein, by using SrTiO₃ nanocrystals enclosed by {023} and {001} facets as a model photocatalyst, this paper proposed a strategy to achieve the full-facets-utilization of the nanocrystals for photocatalytic hydrogen via chemically depositing Pt nanoparticles on all facets. The photo-deposition experiment of CdS provided direct evidence to demonstrate that the {023} facets which were responsible for photooxidation reaction can be function-reversed for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution after depositing Pt nanoparticles, together with the {001} facets. Thus, the full-facets-utilization led to a much-improved activity for photocatalytic hydrogen, in contrast to those SrTiO₃ nanocrystals with only {001} facets deposited by Pt nanoparticles via a photo-deposition method.

Key words： SrTiO₃ nanocrystals; crystal facets; photocatalysis; hydrogen evolution

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52225606 and 51888103), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China, and the Youth Innovation Team of Shaanxi Universities, China.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11708-023-0894-4 and is accessible for authorized users.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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