Noble metals on anodic TiO2 nanotubes mouths: Thermal dewetting of minimal Pt co-catalyst loading leads to significantly enhanced photocatalytic H2 generation

TL;DR

This paper presents a technique to significantly enhance photocatalytic hydrogen production using minimal platinum by site-selective deposition and thermal dewetting on TiO2 nanotubes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of site-selective platinum deposition and thermal dewetting to maximize photocatalytic efficiency with minimal co-catalyst usage.

Findings

Enhanced photocatalytic H2 generation with minimal Pt loading.

Thermal dewetting improves Pt catalyst distribution and activity.

Significant reduction in Pt usage while maintaining high performance.

Abstract

The least is the best. We introduce a technique to strongly reduce Pt use for photocatalytic hydrogen generation from TiO2 nanotubes. By site-selectively depositing thin layers of Pt only at the mouth of the nanotubes and by a subsequent thermal dewetting step, we achieve an outstanding photocatalytic improvement with minimal amounts of co-catalyst.