Silver decorated titanium dioxide for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂)​​ has been widely recognized as a promising material for addressing fossil fuel dependence and environmental degradation due to its robust photocatalytic activity, stability, and low toxicity. However, pristine TiO₂ suffers from the rapid recombination of photogenerated charge carriers and restricted visible-light absorption​​. Given this, suppressing charge recombination while extending its photoresponse to visible light would establish pristine TiO₂ as a viable candidate for scalable photocatalysis. Efforts have emphasized depositing noble-metal cocatalysts or creating heterojunctions via advanced synthesis; however, most strategies involve complex procedures, high costs, or poor reproducibility that hinder real-world implementation.

In our recent work, we developed a controllable synthesis strategy [1] to directly integrate silver (Ag) nanoparticles with TiO₂.​​ Typically, Ag nanoparticles ranging from 5 to 20 nm in size were uniformly anchored onto both the {101} and {001} facets of TiO₂ . This composite exhibited improved performance in photocatalytic hydrogen generation and organic pollutant degradation. The enhanced photocatalytic ability is attributed to the formation of stable Ti–O–Ag interfacial bonds. These bonds create an ​​efficient electron-shuttling pathway​​, accelerating the transfer of photogenerated electrons from the TiO₂ conduction band to the catalytic Ag sites, thereby facilitating charge carrier separation and enhancing light harvesting.

[1] X. Shi, M. Zhang, X. Wang, et al. Nickel nanoparticle-activated MoS2 for efficient visible light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Nanoscale, 2022, 14, 8601−8610.