A Dewetted-Dealloyed Nanoporous Pt Co-Catalyst Formed on TiO₂ Nanotube Arrays Leads to Strongly Enhanced Photocatalytic H₂ Production.

ABSTRACT: Pt nanoparticles are typically decorated as co-catalyst on semiconductors to enhance the photocatalytic performance. Due to the low abundance and high cost of Pt, reaching a high activity with minimized co-catalyst loadings is a key challenge in the field. We explore a dewetting-dealloying strategy to fabricate on TiO₂ nanotubes nanoporous Pt nanoparticles, aiming at improving the co-catalyst mass activity for H₂ generation. For this, we sputter first Pt-Ni bi-layers of controllable thickness (nm range) on highly ordered TiO₂ nanotube arrays, and then induce dewetting-alloying of the Pt-Ni bi-layers by a suitable annealing step in a reducing atmosphere: the thermal treatment causes the Pt and Ni films to agglomerate and at the same time mix with each other,

SUBMITTER: Ji L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7004064 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature