Carbon hollow spheres as cocatalyst of Cu-doped TiO_(2)nanoparticles for improved photocatalytic H_(2)generation

The reasonable employment of cocatalyst in photocatalysis can effectively promote the photocatalytic H_(2)production activity.In this study,carbon hollow spheres(C),as a good conductive nonmetallic material,have been utilized as a novel cocatalyst and a matrix for loading the Cu-doped-TiO_(2)nanoparticles by a successive hydrother-mal method and metal molten salt method.The Cu-doped-TiO_(2)nanoparticles were tightly anchored on the surface of carbon hollow sphere to form a zero-dimensional/three dimensional(0D/3D)Cu-doped-TiO2/C heterojunction.The optimal Cu-doped-TiO_(2)/C heterojunction demon-strated greatly enhanced photocatalytic H_(2) generation activity(14.4 mmol·g^(-1)·h^(-1))compared with TiO_(2)(0.33 mmol·g^(-1)·h^(-1))and TiO_(2)/C(0.7 mmol·g^(-1)·h^(-1)).The performance improvement was mainly due to the syner-gistic effect of carbon hollow sphere cocatalyst and Cu-doping,the Cu-doping in TiO_(2)nanoparticles can minimize charge recombination and enhance the available photoex-cited electrons,while the 3D carbon hollow spheres can act as electron traps to accelerate the charge separation and offer abundant active sites for solar water splitting reaction.