Red phosphorus decorated and doped TiO2 nanofibers for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from pure water

In this study, we report a facile strategy to prepare a new class of red phosphorus (RP) decorated and doped TiO 2 (A: anatase and B: TiO 2 (B)) nanofibers with boosted photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance from pure water. The optimized TiO 2 (B)/RP and TiO 2 (A)/RP heterostructure exhibits significantly enhanced photocatalytic performances, with HER rate reaching 11.4 and 5.3 μmol h −1 , respectively. The optical absorption of TiO 2 is significantly extended to the visible light region after decoration of RP. And more oxygen vacancies (V O ) were introduced by phosphorus doping in the TiO 2 (B)/RP than TiO 2 (A)/RP. The theoretical calculations illustrate the formation of V O can decrease the ratio of effective masses of electron to hole, which gives rise to promoted photoinduced charge separation and transfer. These results suggest that the boosted photocatalytic HER performance should be mainly attributed to the synergetic enhancement in light harvesting and charge separation enabled by RP deposition and P 5+ doping.