Effect of Fe dopant on oxygen vacancy variation and enhanced photocatalysis hydrogen production of LaMnO3 perovskite nanofibers

In the pursuit of enhancing the property of photocatalytic hydrogen production , strategies for enhancing light absorption and the separation and transport efficiency of photo-induced carriers have been studied. Perovskite photocatalyst has great application potential in the field of photocatalytic hydrogen production due to its special crystal structure. LaMn (1-x) Fe x O 3 (x = 0–0.08) perovskite nanofibers with diameters of 50–200 nm were synthesized by electrospinning, and their photochemical properties were investigated. The results of UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, PL spectroscopy, I-t, and EIS revealed that the doping with Fe could improve light absorption and reduce the recombination rate of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, and improve the separation and transfer efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, likely due to the increased concentration of oxygen vacancies caused by doping. Through optimization of the Fe doping amount, an improved hydrogen production efficiency of 767.71 μmol h −1  g −1 was achieved for LaMn 0·96 Fe 0·04 O 3 , which is 2.5 times the efficiency of undoped LaMnO 3 (300.74 μmol h −1  g −1 ). These results provide a new idea for the development of efficient photocatalysts for hydrogen production.