Photocatalytic hydrogen production over solid solutions between BiFeO3 and SrTiO3

Constituting solid solutions has been an appealing means to gain control over various physicochemical properties. In this work, we synthesized a series of SrTiO 3 -BiFeO 3 solid solutions and systematically explored their structural, optical and photocatalytic properties. Our results show that all solid solutions crystallize in a primitive cubic structure and their band gap values can be easily tuned by adjusting molar ratios between SrTiO 3 and BiFeO 3 . Photocatalytic hydrogen production under both full range and visible light irradiation is greatly improved after forming solid solutions. The highest hydrogen production rate obtained is ∼180   μmol/h under full range irradiation (λ   ≥   250   nm) and ∼4.2   μmol/h under visible light irradiation (λ   ≥   400   nm), corresponding to apparent quantum efficiency ∼2.28% and ∼0.10%, respectively. The activity is found to be strongly influenced by surface area and light absorption. Theoretical calculation suggests that Fe contributes to the formation of spin-polarized bands in the middle of original band gap and is responsible for the band gap reduction and visible light photocatalytic activity .