Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production From TiO₂

The production of hydrogen by photo-catalysis under solar irradiation is an attractive process for generating green hydrogen to reduce CO2 emissions. Because of their specific physico-chemical properties, TiO2 photo catalysts have generally been used for hydrogen production. However, their wide band gap, which can only be activated under UV light and the rapid recombination of charge carriers, limits their photo-catalytic applications. However, a number of approaches have been put forward to reduce the energy of its band gap for visible light activity. Among them, TiO2 doping can be examined as an effective process not only for shifting light absorption towards the visible region, but also for reducing charge recombination. This study focuses on enhancing the photo catalytic activity of TiO2. In addition, the synthesis processes used for doped TiO2 were meticulously examined. In addition, a metal such as Cu and noble metals such as Au and Pt are the most widely studied dopants for TiO2. In addition, nitrogen was also used as a non- metal because of its ability to decrease the band gap energy of TiO2. The results also revealed that the sol-gel process is widely used in the synthesis of doped TiO2 photo catalysts because of the crystallinity and high surface area of the nanoparticles obtained.

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