Progress in the study of titanium oxide cluster based composite photocatalysis materials

In order to solve the current energy and environmental problems, photodegradation of aquatic hydrogen is of great significance However, there are still many problems in the range of photoresponse, efficiency, stability and hydrogen production activity of the catalysts For example, the commonly used titanium dioxide material only acts in the ultraviolet light zone, which limits the solar energy utilization efficiency; while the cadmium sulfide material with visible light response has low efficiency and poor stability Therefore, it is still a great challenge to prepare a highly efficient and stable visible light driven catalytic system for mobile hydrogen production The team of inorganic synthetic chemistry led by Zhang Jian and Zhang Lei, researchers of the State Key Laboratory of structural chemistry, Fujian Institute of material structure, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has purposely designed a series of Composite Photocatalytic Material Systems Based on titanium oxygen clusters, starting from the reaction mechanism Through solvothermal reaction, CdS nanoparticles and Ti-O clusters were self-assembled into porous framework material mil-101 in situ step by step to obtain ternary composite materials with good visible light absorption At the same time, due to the synergistic effect among the three components, under the condition of no noble metal as a cocatalyst, the efficiency of photodegradation of aquatic hydrogen is greatly improved compared with CdS / mil-101 binary material What's more, by changing the conjugation properties of the modified organic ligands on the Ti-O clusters, the catalytic activity of the ternary system can be further optimized, and the hydrogen production rate can be increased nearly 50 times Spectroscopic and electrochemical analysis showed that in this composite system, Ti-O clusters can be used as electron transfer media to disperse photogenerated electrons from CDs particles to porous materials, thus promoting charge hole separation and improving catalytic activity The research results not only establish a highly efficient visible light driven catalytic system for hydrogen production based on titanium oxide clusters, but also provide an effective tool to regulate and optimize its catalytic activity at the molecular level Relevant achievements have been published in advanced materials (adv mater 2017, 29, 1603369).