TiO2-based materials for photocatalytic hydrogen production

Hydrogen can be produced photocatalytically employing titanium dioxide-based materials, either through photocatalytic water splitting, or through photocatalytic reforming of organics and biomass. The fundamentals of such processes are here presented, together with the strategies which have been successfully adopted to improve the activity of TiO2-based photocatalysts, in particular for solar light exploitation, by addressing the key factors determining their efficiency for hydrogen generation. These include tailored light absorption by band gap engineering, charge separation improvement by means of junctions and the use of co-catalysts to facilitate electron transfer at the interface for both the reduction of protons and the concurrent oxidation reaction.