Surmounting the extreme synthesis conditions (e.g., hazardous reagents/gas and temperature) of defective nano-TiO 2 photocatalysts is central for effective hydrogen production. Here, controllable synthesis of oxygen-deficient TiO 2 nanostructures by a simple pre-adsorbed organic C−H group (like CH 2 and CH 3 )assisted strategy is first proposed. In addition to directly leading to the formation of oxygen vacancies at room temperature in the air, the surface-bound C−H groups also amazingly causes a significant crystallization delay during the annealing process, which finally realizes the creation of abundant oxygen vacancies under benign aerobic-annealing conditions. Concomitant with the generation of adjustable oxygen vacancies, the photocatalytic performance of the resultant TiO 2 could be fine-tuned. The optimized oxygen vacancy-containing TiO 2 nanomaterial (calcined at 300 °C) shows an extraordinary performance when doped with 1% Pt using triethanolamine as the sacrificial agent, exhibiting an impressive evolution rate of 5.47 mmol h −1 g −1 under visible-light irradiation, being more than five times higher than that of unmodified TiO 2 and surpassing most of the previously reported oxygen-deficient TiO 2 nanostructures. Experimental characterizations and theoretical calculations show that the exceptional performance could be attributed to oxygen vacancy-induced enhanced visible light absorption, increased electron−hole pairs separation, and reduced H 2 absorption energy. This study offers a green method for creating defective TiO 2 photocatalysts, making it easier for mass production and vigorously promoting commercialization.
This study presents a unique and straightforward room temperature-based wet-chemical technique for the self-seeding preparation of three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically branched rutile TiO2, abbreviated HTs, employing titanate nanotubes as the precursor. In the course of the synthesis, spindle-like rutile TiO2 and the intermediate anatase phase were first obtained through a dissolution/precipitation/recrystallization process, with the former serving as the substrates and the latter as the nucleation precursor to growing the branches, which finally gave birth to the production of 3D HTs nanostructures. When the specifically created hierarchical TiO2 was used as the photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs), a significantly improved power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.32% was achieved, outperforming a typical TiO2 (P25) nanoparticle-based reference cell (η = 5.97%) under the same film thickness. The effective combination of robust light scattering, substantial dye loading, and fast electron transport for the HTs nanostructures is responsible for the remarkable performance.
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