Self-assembled monolayers enhance the efficiency of Pt single atom co-catalysts in photocatalytic H2 generation

Single atom (SA) catalysis, over the last 10 years, has become a forefront in heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis, and most recently also in photocatalysis. Pt SAs on titania have been reported to be a highly effective co-catalyst in photocatalytic H2 generation. Most recently, for the synthes...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yue Wang, Imgon Hwang, Zhenni Wu, Patrik Schmuki
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: Elsevier 2021
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Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/527b3560647740c2a1cd9f6c75e4d4f7
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Summary:Single atom (SA) catalysis, over the last 10 years, has become a forefront in heterogeneous catalysis, electrocatalysis, and most recently also in photocatalysis. Pt SAs on titania have been reported to be a highly effective co-catalyst in photocatalytic H2 generation. Most recently, for the synthesis of SA loading on titania surfaces, some simple immersion techniques have been described. Here we introduce a so far unexplored but evidently very effective approach to enhance the effectivity of Pt SA co-catalysts on anodic TiO2 layers. For this, we first decorate TiO2 surfaces with a partial coverage of headgroups of silane self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) and then deposit Pt SAs on this SAM modified surface. We observe a significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity for H2 generation using this sensitization of the surface with a modified SAM.