A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production performance of pillararene-doped mesoporous TiO2 with extended visible-light response
Authors: Wu Haimei, Wang Mengyuan, Jing Fang, Kong Derui, Chen Yifan, Jia Chunman, Li Jianwei
Publisher: Elsevier B.V.
Publication year: 2022
Journal: Chinese Chemical Letters
Journal name in source: Chinese Chemical Letters
Volume: 33
First page : 1983
Last page: 1987
eISSN: 1878-5964
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cclet.2021.09.095
Pillararenes are a new type of supramolecular hosts, and they have been widely applied in drug delivery, catalysis, separation process, and sensors. However, they have rarely been used to produce hydrogen. Here, we report that pillararenes were used as functional molecules to explore photocatalysts and efficiently promoted hydrogen production from water. The most common and easily synthesized p-dimethoxy pillar[5]arene (PI-OMe) was employed to form an organic-inorganic hybrid material with titanium dioxide (TiO2), denoted as PI-OMe-TiO2, using a convenient sol-gel method. When the material was loaded with Pt nanoparticles, the resulting Pt/PI-OMe-TiO2 had a good activity and stability in catalyzing water splitting to produce hydrogen under visible light. The optimized catalyst Pt/PI-OMe-TiO2(5.2 wt%) had a photocatalytic hydrogen production rate of 1736 μmol g − 1 h − 1 under visible light (λ > 420 nm) irradiation. The catalyst with a Pt loading of 0.5 wt% and a PI-OMe content of 5.2 wt% also showed good long-term durability after 10 cycles of 50 h testing. The total amount of hydrogen produced was 65.01 mmol/g, and the corresponding turnover number (TON) value was 2084. Our findings suggest that pillararene derivatives are promising functional molecules to make efficient and stable hybrid photocatalysts with TiO2 and open a new door to hydrogen production using visible light.