Facilely coupling CaTiO3 nanorods with Cu nanoparticles for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen evolution through efficient charge separation

Photocatalytically splitting water to hydrogen production is a great potential for addressing the issue of energy crisis and environmental pollution. Metal-semiconductor hybrid photocatalyst has attracted increasing attention, and especially non-noble metal decoration is one of promising strategies to promote photoinduced electron-hole pairs separation for an efficient solar-to-hydrogen evolution. Herein, a facile solvothermal approach was successfully employed to prepare calcium titanate (CaTiO 3 ) nanorods with decoration of copper particles. The composition and morphology characterization showed that the Cu particle was deposited on the surface of CaTiO 3 nanorod. The as-synthesized CaTiO 3 /Cu composites exhibited promoted solar-to-hydrogen performance and their activities varied from copper loading amounts. The optimized CaTiO 3 /Cu-0.05 achieved a hydrogen evolution rate of 251 µmol g −1 h −1 , which was much higher than that of bare CaTiO 3 . Based on the photoluminescence spectra and photocurrent density measurements, it was proposed that efficient separation of photogenerated charges was achieved between the CaTiO 3 nanorod and Cu nanoparticles, which promoted water splitting for H 2 production. This work further confirms that metallic Cu decoration is an efficient approach to promote photocatalytic H 2 production performance of semiconductor photocatalysts.