Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution in Ternary Hybrid TiO2/CuO/Cu Thoroughly Mesoporous Nanofibers

Development of novel hybrid photocatalysts with high efficiency and durability for photocatalytic hydrogen generation is highly desired but still remains a grand challenge currently. In the present work, we reported the exploration of ternary hybrid TiO2/CuO/Cu thoroughly mesoporous nanofibers via a foaming-assisted electrospinning technique. It is found that by adjusting the Cu contents in the solutions, the unitary (TiO2), binary (TiO2/CuO, TiO2/Cu), and ternary (TiO2/CuO/Cu) mesoporous products can be obtained, enabling the growth of TiO2/CuO/Cu ternary hybrids in a tailored manner. The photocatalytic behavior of the as-synthesized products as well as P25 was evaluated in terms of their hydrogen evolution efficiency for the photodecomposition water under Xe lamp irradiation. The results showed that the ternary TiO2/CuO/Cu thoroughly mesoporous nanofibers exhibit a robust stability and the most efficient photocatalytic H2 evolution with the highest release rate of ∼851.3 μmol g–1 h–1, which was profoundly enhanced for more than 3.5 times with respect to those of the pristine TiO2 counterparts and commercial P25, suggesting their promising applications in clean energy production.