High photocatalytic hydrogen production from methanol aqueous solution using the photocatalysts CuS/TiO_2

摘要

Photocatalysts CuS/TiO_2 for hydrogen production were synthesized by hydrothermal method at high temperature and characterized by XRD, UV-visible DRS, XPS, EDX, SEM and TEM. When TiO_2 was loaded with CuS, it showed photocatalytic activities for water decomposition to hydrogen in methanol aqueous solution under 500 W Xe lamp. Among the photocatalysts with various compositions, the one with 1 wt% CuS-loaded TiO_2 showed the maximum photocatalytic activity for water splitting, which indicated CuS could improve the separation ratio of photoexcited electrons and holes. What's more, the amounts of the produced hydrogen was about 570 nmol h~(-1) which had exceeded pure titania (P25) 32 times. In the present paper, it is proven that CuS can act as an effective co-catalyst to enhance the photocatalytic H_2 production activity of TiO_2.