Rapid exfoliation of H2O2-intercalated layered titanate and visible-photocatalytic hydrogen production performance of exfoliated nanosheet

Usually, it takes 3–7 days to exfoliate the layered titanic acid H 1.07 Ti 1.73 O 4 (HTO) into Ti 1.73 O 4 1.07– (TO) nanosheet . The H 2 O 2 molecules can easily enter into the interlayers of the HTO crystal to form the H 2 O 2 intercalated HTO. The H 2 O 2 intercalation can achieve rapid exfoliation of HTO. It takes 1 h to exfoliate into a yellow H 2 O 2 -modified TO nanosheet, which has a wide absorption wavelength range and a narrow band gap. Moreover, such 2D nanosheet has a large specific surface area and a large number of reactive sites. And such yellow H 2 O 2 -modified TO nanosheet displays some visible photocatalytic hydrogen production performance. When the H 2 O 2 -TO nanosheet is loaded with Ni(OH) 2 , the sample can show a higher photocatalytic hydrogen production performance. The maximum photocatalytic hydrogen production rate of the Ni(OH) 2 -H 2 O 2 -TO catalyst is 32.48 μmol h −1 g −1 , which is 4.1 and 1.9 times higher than that of H 2 O 2 -TO and Pt-H 2 O 2 -TO. This is due to the formation of a type II heterojunction between the H 2 O 2 -TO nanosheet and Ni(OH) 2 . This heterojunction can achieve the effective separation of photogenerated carriers.